Loft Shayne, Sadler Andreas, Braithwaite Janelle, Huf Samuel
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, AustraliaDefence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, AustraliaDefence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia.
Hum Factors. 2015 Dec;57(8):1417-26. doi: 10.1177/0018720815599518. Epub 2015 Aug 27.
The objective of this article is to examine the extent to which interruptions negatively impact situation awareness and long-term performance in a submarine track management task where pre- and postinterruption display scenes remained essentially identical.
Interruptions in command and control task environments can degrade performance well beyond the first postinterruption action typically measured for sequential static tasks, because individuals need to recover their situation awareness for multiple unfolding display events. Participants in the current study returned to an unchanged display scene following interruption and therefore could be more immune to such long-term performance deficits.
The task required participants to monitor a display to detect contact heading changes and to make enemy engagement decisions. Situation awareness (Situation Present Assessment Method) and subjective workload (NASA-Task Load Index) were measured. The interruption replaced the display for 20 s with a blank screen, during which participants completed a classification task.
Situation awareness after returning from interruption was degraded. Participants were slower to make correct engagement decisions and slower and less accurate in detecting heading changes, despite these task decisions being made at least 40 s following the interruption.
Interruptions negatively impacted situation awareness and long-term performance because participants needed to redetermine the location and spatial relationship between the displayed contacts when returning from interruption, either because their situation awareness for the preinterruption scene decayed or because they did not encode the preinterruption scene.
Interruption in work contexts such as submarines is unavoidable, and further understanding of how operators are affected is required to improve work design and training.
本文旨在研究在中断前后显示场景基本相同的潜艇航迹管理任务中，中断对态势感知和长期绩效产生负面影响的程度。
指挥与控制任务环境中的中断对绩效的影响，远不止于通常针对顺序静态任务所测量的首次中断后行动，因为个体需要为多个展开的显示事件恢复其态势感知。本研究中的参与者在中断后回到未改变的显示场景，因此可能对这种长期绩效缺陷更具免疫力。
该任务要求参与者监控显示屏以检测接触航向变化并做出敌方交战决策。测量了态势感知（态势现状评估方法）和主观工作量（NASA任务负荷指数）。中断期间，显示屏被空白屏幕取代20秒，在此期间参与者完成一项分类任务。
中断后返回时的态势感知下降。尽管这些任务决策是在中断至少40秒后做出的，但参与者做出正确交战决策的速度较慢，检测航向变化的速度也较慢且准确性较低。
中断对态势感知和长期绩效产生负面影响，因为参与者从中断返回时需要重新确定显示接触点之间的位置和空间关系，这要么是因为他们对中断前场景的态势感知衰退，要么是因为他们没有对中断前场景进行编码。
在潜艇等工作环境中，中断是不可避免的，需要进一步了解操作员受到的影响，以改进工作设计和培训。
