Evaluating the Utility of a Multi-Layer Visual Display for Air Battle Managers

Abstract

Air Battle Managers in the United States Air Force must continually monitor a situation display (SD) in addition to performing a number of secondary tasks, which typically occlude part or all of the SD. The purpose of the present investigation was to determine whether the use of a multi-layer display, on which visual information is presented at two different depths, with varying degrees of transparency, would reduce the performance decrement associated with concurrent task performance by eliminating the effects of occlusion. A multi-element tracking task was employed as an analogy to the SD, while a cognitive vigilance task was used to represent the additional visual task. Analyses suggest that transparency effects may play a role in reducing the deficits introduced by occlusion, and may also reduce perceived mental workload. However, despite the findings of previous research, there was no significant effect of depth.

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