Explicit, Implicit, and Subjective Rating Measures of Situation Awareness in a Monitoring Task
Abstract
The situation awareness (SA) and mental workload of 56 subjects were evaluated as they monitored one or more attributes of six objects moving systematically over a rectangular grid. Subjects were assigned to one of seven groups depending upon whether they were to monitor object locations (location task), object colors (color task), whether the objects flashed (flash task), or some combination of these three. Both task performance and subjective ratings were used to assess subject awareness of the three object attributes. In addition, subjective ratings of mental workload were collected. All subjects performed the monitoring task under four different conditions formed from the factorial combination of (1) the probability that objects of a certain color would flash and (2) whether object colors remained consistent or changed during the course of a trial. The results pointed to the usefulness of both flash and color task performance as measures of SA. Subjects were very poor at the location task, suggesting either their location awareness was poor or the location task is not a good measure of that awareness. Subjective ratings proved useful but occasionally dissociated from task performance. One possibility is that subjective ratings reflect rational inferences by the subjects rather than the outcome of their introspections.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA262702
Entities
People
- Martin L. Fracker
- Sharon A. Davis