The Relationship Among Eye Movements, Head Movements, and Manual Responses in a Simulated Air Traffic Control Task.

Abstract

Performance of operators in aviation systems is highly dependent on their ability to visually scan information sources, identify problematic situations, and respond appropriately. Scanning behavior has often been mentioned as a contributing factor in the performance of air traffic controllers. An investigation was initiated to identity how alterations in various gaze measures could serve as indices of changes in alertness. As part of that larger investigation, a subset of the complete data base was used to investigate the nature of changes in eye and head movements within a session, between days, and among event types. Ten subjects were chosen for their propensity to make head movements when shifting gaze from the CRT display to the keypad for a manual response. The task consisted of 44 infrequently occurring events for which manual responses were required. There were 4 types of events; Unidentified Aircraft, Loss of Altitude, Conflict (2 aircraft at the same altitude flying toward each other), No Conflict (2 aircraft at the same altitude flying away from each other). The 2-hour session was divided into 3 approximately equal time blocks. The dependent measures were: eye movement latency, head movement latency, and the eye movement following the manual response that returned the eye to the visual display (return saccades). Eye and head movement latencies were measured from the manual response. The following conclusions were made: There were no significant eye-head movement differences among the event types. The relationship between the initiation of head movements and the initiation of eye movements appears to be a stable characteristic of the individual; it was consistent between days, as well as within the session.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1995
Accession Number
ADA298753

Entities

People

  • Donna J. Boyer

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Traffic
  • Aircrafts
  • Altitude
  • Aviation Medicine
  • Computer Programs
  • Dwell Time
  • Eye
  • Eye Movements
  • Flight Paths
  • Frequency
  • Identification
  • Keyboards
  • Oklahoma
  • Psychology
  • Traffic
  • United States
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Vision Science/Vision Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience.