Overcoming representational errors in complex environments

Errors in situation awareness (SA) can degrade the decision process. One particularly troublesome SA error is the representational error, which reflects problems with the misinterpretation of information based on a person's current mental model of a situation. This study investigates whether the schema-relatedness of information affects the likelihood that a person will fall prey to a representational error. Using a high-fidelity simulation of an air traffic control task, two hypotheses were examined: (a) Schema-bizarre information will affect SA more than schema-irrelevant information, and (b) schema-unexpected information will impact SA more than the absence of schema-expected information. The results supported the first hypothesis but not the second. These results provide an indication of the types of information that affect SA. Enhancing SA by emphasizing the type of information to which an operator is naturally less inclined to respond is one approach to improving system design and thereby performance.