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Abstract

Providing operators additional information helping them to validate alarms has been found to be a countermeasure for problems related to the cry wolf effect (i.e., operators ignoring alarms). Adding information can be realized with likelihood alarm systems (LAS) or with access to alarm validity information (AVI). The two studies presented here examined behavior and performance consequences of the combination of LAS and AVI in multi-task settings. It was investigated to what extent concurrent task performance and alert task performance depend on characteristics of the LAS (i.e. proportion of different alert types) and cost of cross-checking AVI. Results suggest that those LAS characteristics varied here do not influence participants’ performance. Secondly, no benefit of LAS over binary alarm systems (BAS) emerged when increasing the cost of accessing AVI. Results are further discussed with regard to participants’ response patterns.

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Investigating Benefits of Likelihood Alarm Systems in Presence of Alarm Validity Information

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