Effects of Task Difficulty and Display Format on Automation Usage Strategy: A Workload Capacity Analysis.

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology
• Automation Science

Background:

• Workload capacity quantifies concurrent information processing efficiency.
• It serves as a metric for automation usage strategy in time-sensitive decision tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate automation usage strategy using workload capacity analysis.
• To examine the influence of information display format and task difficulty on automation interaction.

Main Methods:

• Subjects performed a speeded judgment task with an automated decision aid.
• Decision cues from the aid were presented at varying onset times.
• Response time distributions were analyzed using workload capacity measures (C_zOR and C_zAND).

Main Results:

• Operators moderated their response times in relation to the automated aid's input.
• This moderation occurred under difficult task conditions, irrespective of display format.
• Both anticipation of and reaction to the aid's diagnosis influenced operator response times.

Conclusions:

• Automated decision aids can lead operators to delay their own responses in speeded tasks.
• This can result in suboptimal joint response times, even with a highly accurate aid.
• Automation designers must balance response time and accuracy when implementing decision aids.