Supporting Situation Assessment through Attention Guidance and Diagnostic Aiding: The Benefits and Costs of Display Enhancement on Judgment Skill

This chapter presents a study of human performers' ability to integrate multiple sources of displayed, uncertain information in a laboratory simulation of threat assessment in a battlefield environment. Two different types of automated aids were used to enhance the situation display, the first guiding visual attention to relevant cues, the second recommending an actual judgment. The chapter also assesses performance in terms of skill score, as well as its decomposition using Stewart's refinement of Murphy's skill score measure using Brunswik's lens model. Results indicate that the introduction of display enhancement in this task has both benefits and costs, in terms of performance. Modeling offers plausible interpretations of these (in some cases counterintuitive) effects. It is noted here that the skill score decomposition augmented with lens model analysis shows results that would not be readily apparent using more traditional measures of performance such as percent correct or reaction time. It is believed that this research provides a useful demonstration of how additional insights into situation assessment and human-automation interaction can be gained by analysis and modeling that simultaneously describes human judgment, the task environment, and their interaction.