Neuro-cognitive benefits of high agent transparency on operators' cognitive and affective emergent states in...

Although transparency enhances Human-Agent Teaming (HAT), its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. This within-subject study investigates how agent transparency shapes operators' cognitive and affective emergent states-situation awareness (SA), trust, workload, perceived task complexity, and perceived task control-and associated neural activity during unmanned system monitoring. Thirty participants completed unmanned vehicle monitoring tasks under varying transparency levels while functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recorded hemodynamic responses. The results showed that high transparency improves SA, fosters trust, reduces workload and perceived task complexity, and strengthens perceived task control. The fNIRS data further indicated that high transparency reduced cognitive load in Broca's area and the frontal eye field, while increasing it in the frontal pole area and premotor and primary motor cortices. These findings advance theoretical understanding of transparency's role in HAT and offer practical guidance for designing transparent systems that support operators' cognition and align subjective and objective SA. The insights gained contribute to the design of transparent systems that improve operator support and collaboration in high-risk operational domains such as forestry and disaster response.