College of Safety Science and Engineering, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, People's Republic of China.
College of Foreign Languages, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2024 Nov 22;19(11):e0314183. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314183. eCollection 2024.
Multiple intersecting situational tasks in the field of aviation often cause air traffic controllers to face issues pertaining to interruption and task switching. To investigate the impact of task interruption on the situation awareness of air traffic controllers, two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1, which focused on 44 new graduates preparing to work in the field of air traffic control, revealed that task interruption reduced the participants' levels of situation awareness. Experiment 2, which focused on 80 new air traffic control graduates, employed a 2 (primary task modality: visual, auditory) × 2 (interruption modality: visual, auditory) between-subjects design and revealed that the negative effect of task interruption on situation awareness was moderated by task modality. Interruptions that occur in the same modality as the primary task were shown to result in greater decreases than were cross modal interruptions. Visual interruption led to a greater decrease in situation awareness than did auditory interruption, and interruption of the visual task also caused a greater decrease in situation awareness than did interruption of the auditory task. These findings might be valuable in attempts to enhance situation awareness among air traffic controllers by providing insights into the design of human‒computer interactions in the context of an air traffic control automation system.
航空领域中的多项交叉情境任务常常导致空中交通管制员面临中断和任务切换的问题。为了研究任务中断对空中交通管制员情境意识的影响，进行了两项实验。实验 1 以 44 名即将从事空中交通管制工作的新毕业生为研究对象，结果表明任务中断降低了参与者的情境意识水平。实验 2 以 80 名新的空中交通管制毕业生为研究对象，采用 2（主要任务模式：视觉、听觉）×2（中断模式：视觉、听觉）的被试间设计，结果表明任务模式调节了任务中断对情境意识的负面影响。与主要任务模式相同的中断模式会导致更大的情境意识下降，而跨模式中断则不会。视觉中断比听觉中断导致更大的情境意识下降，中断视觉任务也比中断听觉任务导致更大的情境意识下降。这些发现可能有助于通过提供有关空中交通管制自动化系统中人机交互设计的见解，来提高空中交通管制员的情境意识。
