Abstract
Assessing the impact of providing a decision aid on decision time, workload, and performance is critical for optimizing overall human-system performance. This paper first examines the effects of providing a decision aid on decision time and workload and then looks at the effects of decision time and decision-aid accuracy on performance. Results show that the availability of a decision aid exacts a penalty in decision time but provides a significant decrease in cognitive workload. The availability of a decision aid significantly increases operators' performance, but does not raise it to the performance level that a high accuracy decision aid would achieve. Contrary to expectation, a longer decision time has a negative effect on performance, especially with a low accuracy decision aid. The results indicate the importance of providing operators with training in use of a decision aid so they develop an accurate mental model of how it works and how to optimize the integration of its judgments with their own.
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