Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting, October 22-26, 2012, Boston, MA

PDFProceedingsAttentionRadar clutterAir traffic controlAir pilotsPerformance measurementVisual perceptionUnited StatesHuman Factors and Ergonomics SocietyBeck, Melissa R.Trenchard, Michaelvan Lamsweerde, AmandaGoldstein, Rebecca R.Lohrenz, MauraLouisiana State University (Baton Rouge, La.)Naval Research Laboratory (John C. Stennis Space Center)John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (U.S.)NTL-AVIATION-Aviation Human FactorsNTL-AVIATION-Air Traffic ControlNTL-AVIATION-Aviation Safety/AirworthinessNTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-Human FactorsNTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-Aviation Safety/AirworthinessVolpe National Transportation Systems Center, Technical Reference CenterClutter can slow visual search. However, experts may develop attention strategies that alleviate the effects of clutter on search performance. In the current study we examined the effects of global and local clutter on visual search performance and attention strategies. Pilots and undergraduates searched for an elevation marker in charts of high, medium, and low global clutter. The target was in a low or high local clutter region of the chart or it was absent. High global and local clutter slowed search performance for both pilots and undergraduates. Pilots were more accurate but slower. Pilots\u2019 search strategies differed from undergraduates in the following ways: they had more conservative criteria for responding target absent and spent more time processing the information within each fixation. Pilots and undergraduates used a coarse-to-fine search strategy in which, as the trial progressed, fixation durations increased and saccade distance decreased