Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Detecting changes in complex monitoring tasks is important for situation awareness, yet surprisingly difficult. Interruptions exacerbate this problem. An intuitively appealing solution to this problem is Instant Replay. Users could replay interrupted periods at high speed to quickly perceive changes. Instant Replay's appeal seems to rest on its familiarity and realistic re-presentation of the temporal sequence of the interrupted situation. However, current theories of perception, including Naïve Realism (Smallman & St. John, 2005), predict this emphasis on realism to be misguided. We compared two versions of replay against three alternative tools in a naval air warfare simulation in which 35 participants monitored a busy airspace for significant changes. One alternative, CHEX, a situation awareness recovery concept we are developing, automatically detects and logs changes into an interactive table. CHEX provided an effective representation for quickly recovering situation awareness. In contrast, realistic Instant Replay proved worse than no support at all.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Altmann

E. M.

Trafton

J. G.

(2002). Memory for goals: An activation-based model. Cognitive Science, 26, 39–83.

Baddeley

A. D.

(1972). Selective attention and performance in dangerous environments. British Journal of Psychology, 63, 537–546.

Department of Defense (1999). Department of defense, interface standard, common warfighting symbology: MIL-STD-2525B. Washington DC: Department of Defense, Defense Information Systems Agency. Available at http://symbology.disa.mil/symbol/index.html.

DiVita

Obermayer

Nugent

Linville

J. M.

(2004). Verification of the change blindness phenomenon while managing critical events on a combat information display. Human Factors, 46, 205–218.

Hutchins

Hollan

Norman

(1986). Direct Manipulation Interfaces. In Norman

Draper

, (Eds.), User Centered System Design. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 87–124.

Levin

D.T.

Momen

Drivdahl

S.B.

Simons

D.J.

(2000) The metacognitive error of overestimating change-detection ability. Visual Cognition, 7, 397–412.

McFarlane

D. C.

(2002). Comparison of four primary methods for coordinating the interruption of people in human-computer interaction. Human-Computer Interaction, 17, 63–139.

Monk

C. A.

Boehm-Davis

D A.

Trafton

J. G.

(2002). The attentional costs of interrupting task performance at various stages. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting. Santa Monica, CA: HFES.

Monsell

(2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 134–140.

10.

NASA (no date). Task Load Index [TLX] Version 1.0, Users' Manual. Available at http://iac.dtic.mil/hsiac/Products.htm#TLX.

11.

Rensink

R. A.

(2002). Change detection. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 245–277.

12.

Roscoe

S. N.

(1968). Airborne displays for flight and navigation. Human Factors, 10, 321–332.

13.

Smallman

H. S.

St. John

(2003). CHEX (Change History EXplicit): New HCI concepts for change awareness. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp. 528–532). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

14.

Smallman

H. S.

St. John

(2005). Naïve Realism: Misplaced faith in the utility of realistic displays. Ergonomics in Design, in press.

15.

St. John

Smallman

H. S.

Manes

D. I.

Feher

B. A.

Morrison

J. G.

(2005). Heuristic automation for decluttering tactical displays. Human Factors. In press.

16.

Trafton

J. G.

Altmann

E. M.

Brock

D. P.

Mintz

F. E.

(2003). Preparing to resume an interrupted task: Effects of prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58, 583–603.

17.

Varakin

D. A.

Levin

D. T.

Fidler

(2004). Unseen and unaware: Implications of recent research on failures of visual awareness for human-computer interface design. Human-Computer Interaction, 19, 389–422.

18.

Wickens

C. D.

Carswell

C. M.

(1995). The proximity compatibility principle: Its psychological foundation and relevance to display design. Human Factors, 37, 473–494.

19.

Williams

L. J.

(1995). Peripheral target recognition and visual field narrowing in aviators and nonaviators. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 5, 215–232.

Recovery from Interruptions to a Dynamic Monitoring Task: The Beguiling Utility of Instant Replay

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References