EFFECTS OF FIRST AUTOMATION FAILURE ON SITUATION AWARENESS AND PERFORMANCE IN AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TASK

The effects of first automation failure (e.g., Wickens & Xu, 2002) on performance of individuals in a subsequent failure trial when they worked with automated systems applied to different stages of information processing (e.g., Parasuraman, Sheridan, & Wickens, 2000), was examined using the domain of air traffic control. The results revealed that even after exposure to an automation failure, individuals working with higher order automation continued to have lower situation awareness and were slower in responding to a subsequent automation failure compared to those in the information acquisition condition. Results from this experiment have practical implications for automation design and operator training. Automation can be defined as ‘any sensing, detection, information-processing, decision-making, or control action that could be performed by humans but is actually performed by a machine ’ (Moray, Inagaki, & Itoh, 2000; p.44). Automated systems clearly offer several benefits. For example, reliable automation has shown to improve conflict detection performance of air traffic controllers (e.g., Metzger & Parasuraman, 2005)