Visual Displays and Cognitive Tunneling: Frames of Reference Effects on Spatial Judgments and Change Detection

Abstract

This proposal describes a two-part study which illustrate “cognitive tunneling” as it affects information gathering and change detection in computer-generated terrain displays. We define cognitive tunneling as the effect where observers tend to focus attention on information from specific areas of a display to the exclusion of information presented outside of these highly attended areas. Previous research suggests that cognitive tunneling is induced by more immersive or egocentric visual displays and results in poorer information extraction and situation awareness as compared to an exocentric display of the same information. The experiment discussed here determined that failure of the observers to integrate information across the two views of the immersed display was the primary cause of the cognitive tunneling effect. In addition, participants' abilities to detect changes to objects in the environment were affected by the type of change as well as the salience of its presentation within the view.