Automation and Inattentional Blindness in a Simulated Flight Task

Abstract

The study reported herein is a subset of a larger investigation on the role of automation in the context of single pilot aviation operations. This portion of the study focused on the relationship between automation and inattentional blindness (IB) occurrences for a runway incursion. The runway incursion critical stimulus was directly relevant to primary task performance. Participants performed the final five minutes of a landing scenario in one of three automation conditions (autopilot, autothrottle, and manual). Sixty non-pilot participants completed this study and 70% (42 of 60) failed to detect the runway incursion critical stimulus. Participants in the partial automation condition were significantly more likely to detect the runway incursion when compared to those in the full automation condition. The odds of participant detection in the full automation condition did not significantly vary from the manual condition. Participants that detected the runway incursion did not have significantly higher scores on any component of the NASA-TLX compared to those who failed to detect. The relationship demonstrated between automation condition and IB occurrence indicates the role of automation in operational attention detriment.

Repeated Induction of Inattentional Blindness in a Simulated Aviation Environment

“…In a simulated driving task conducted by Kennedy and Bliss (2013), participants who reported low mental demand while following automated navigational directives were more likely to experience IB to a task-relevant critical stimulus than those participants who reported higher mental demand. In part one of this study, participants monitoring flight automation were just as likely to exhibit IB to a critical stimulus as those flying manually (Kennedy et al, 2014). IB occurrence rates exhibited during automationinduced underload were equivalent to those exhibited during high workload, in line with the extended-U model of stress and performance (Hancock & Warm, 1989;Kennedy & Bliss, 2013).…”

“…A large human-in-the-loop experiment was conducted in three stages to evaluate IB in an aviation context. The first run explored if low workload conditions found in highly automated environments could produce an IB occurrence rates similar to those observed during high workload conditions (Kennedy, Stephens, Williams, & Schutte, 2014). The second run attempted a second IB induction with a highly taskrelevant critical stimulus to explore IB rates and detection group memberships changes.…”

“…Participants completed a simplified landing task twice each with a critical stimulus runway incursion. Following the first induction, all subjects were asked questions that clearly indicated the importance of attending to visual information during landing (Kennedy et al, 2014). Next, subjects performed the second induction by performing the exact same landing task featuring a different critical stimulus runway incursion.…”

“…We predicted an overall reduction of IB occurrence rates across automation conditions in the repeated induction of IB (Parasuraman & Manzey, 2010;Young & Stanton, 2002). We predicted fewest IB occurrences when workload was moderate (Cartwright-Finch & Lavie, 2007;Kennedy & Bliss, 2013;Kennedy et al, 2014). Of interest was the exploration of the IB group membership changes (IB/Detect) across automation conditions.…”

How does a collision warning system shape driver's brake response time? The influence of expectancy and automation complacency on real-life emergency braking

“…Studies of aviation safety on automation complacency (Parasuraman and Manzey, 2010) have shown that inattentional blindness (Simmons and Chabris, 1999) can be created by a warning device when shifting from monitoring an assisting device to performing a task (Bailey and Scerbo, 2007). In simulated flight pilots fail to detect a clear stimulus when target stimulus is unexpected and incomplete or incorrect representations of the situation are given by the warning device (Kennedy et al, 2014).…”