TY - JOUR
T1 - Decision support and vulnerability to interruption in a dynamic multitasking environment
AU - Hodgetts, Helen M.
AU - Tremblay, Sébastien
AU - Vallières, Benoît R.
AU - Vachon, François
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/2/4
Y1 - 2015/2/4
N2 - Abstract Using a microworld simulation of maritime decision making, we compared two decision support systems (DSS) in their impact upon recovery from interruption. The Temporal Overview Display (TOD) and Change History Table (CHT) - designed to support temporal awareness and change detection, respectively - have previously proven useful in improving situation awareness; however, evaluation of support tools for multitasking environments should not be limited to the specific aspects of the task that they were designed to augment. Using a combination of performance, self-report, and eye-tracking measures, we find that both DSS counter-intuitively have a negative effect on performance. Resumption lags are increased, elevated post-interruption decision-making times persist for longer, and defensive effectiveness is impaired relative to No-DSS. Eye-tracking measures indicate that in the baseline condition, participants tend to encode the visual display more broadly, where as those in the two DSS conditions may have experienced a degree of attentional tunnelling due to high workload. We suggest that for a support tool to be beneficial it should ease the burden on attentional resources so that these can be used for reconstructing a mental model of the post-interruption scene.
AB - Abstract Using a microworld simulation of maritime decision making, we compared two decision support systems (DSS) in their impact upon recovery from interruption. The Temporal Overview Display (TOD) and Change History Table (CHT) - designed to support temporal awareness and change detection, respectively - have previously proven useful in improving situation awareness; however, evaluation of support tools for multitasking environments should not be limited to the specific aspects of the task that they were designed to augment. Using a combination of performance, self-report, and eye-tracking measures, we find that both DSS counter-intuitively have a negative effect on performance. Resumption lags are increased, elevated post-interruption decision-making times persist for longer, and defensive effectiveness is impaired relative to No-DSS. Eye-tracking measures indicate that in the baseline condition, participants tend to encode the visual display more broadly, where as those in the two DSS conditions may have experienced a degree of attentional tunnelling due to high workload. We suggest that for a support tool to be beneficial it should ease the burden on attentional resources so that these can be used for reconstructing a mental model of the post-interruption scene.
KW - Command and control
KW - Decision support systems
KW - Human performance
KW - Interruption
KW - Microworld
KW - Multitasking
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84937760748&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.01.009
DO - 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.01.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84937760748
SN - 1071-5819
VL - 79
SP - 106
EP - 117
JO - International Journal of Human Computer Studies
JF - International Journal of Human Computer Studies
M1 - 1932
ER -