Investigating the relationship between eye movements and situation awareness in weather forecasting

Physiological indicators, including eye tracking measures, may provide insight into human decision making and cognition in many domains, including weather forecasting. Situation awareness (SA), a critical component of forecast decision making, is commonly conceptualized as the degree to which information is perceived, understood, and projected into a future context. Drawing upon recent applications of eye tracking in the study of forecaster decision making, we investigate the relationship among eye movement measures, automation, and SA assessed through a freeze probe assessment method. In addition, we explore the relationship between an automated forecasting decision aid use and information seeking behavior. In this study, a sample of professional weather forecasters completed a series of tasks, informed by a set of forecasting decision aids, and with variable access to an experimental automated tool, while an eye tracking system captured data related to eye movements and information usage. At the end of each forecasting task, participants responded to a set of questions related to the environmental situation in the framework of a survey-based assessment technique in order to assess their level of situation awareness. Regression analysis revealed a moderate relationship between the SA measure and eye tracking metrics, supporting the hypothesis that eye tracking may have utility in assessing SA. The results support the use of eye tracking in the assessment of specific and measurable attributes of the decision-making process in weather forecasting. The findings are discussed in light of potential benefits that eye tracking could bring to human performance assessment as well as decision-making research in the forecasting domain.