Integrating Imperfect Automated Aids Into a Multi -Task Situations

Automated aids are typically designed to help people monitor for particular events or situations during complex tasks. Automated aids can be useful by taking over a function once performed by the human thereby freeing up the person to do other tasks. However, automated aids may also introduce costs to task performance that are not readily apparent. In four experiments, we examined the impact of interruptions by an alarm embedded within a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI) on two types of concurrent tasks; a compensatory tracking task and a working memory task. In addition, we examined how three important alarm characteristics; the informativeness (three vs. two stage alerts), the modality, and the threshold of the alert, affected both conflict detection and concurrent task performance. Automated aids with higher false alarm rates resulted in poorer concurrent task performance, as evidenced by higher tracking error and reduced working memory accuracy. Likelihood alerts did not mitigate costs associated with performance decrements due to the reduced alert threshold. Finally, auditory alerts tended to produce an auditory preemption effect, driving attention quickly to the alerted domain at the expense of concurrent task performance.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Colcombe, Angela Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christopher Wickens

• Psychology, Cognitive

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3223569

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82107