Effects of battlefield display frames of reference on navigation tasks, spatial judgements, and change detection

This paper describes an experiment which illustrates the cause of 'cognitive tunnelling' as it affects information gathering and perception-based task performance in computer-generated terrain displays of varying frames of reference. Cognitive tunnelling refers to the effect where observers focus attention on information from specific areas of a display to the exclusion of information presented outside these areas. Previous research suggests that cognitive tunnelling is induced by more immersive or egocentric visual displays. Results from our preceding study suggested that an immersed split-screen display induces cognitive tunnelling and results in poorer information extraction and situation awareness than an exocentric display of the same information. The current study determined that failure of the observers to integrate information across the two views of the immersed display led to the cognitive tunnelling effect. Cognitive tunnelling was also affected by primacy of information initially presented within the larger egocentric view in the immersed display.