Also available online.

The Mission Awareness Rating Scale (MARS), a subjective situation awareness (SA) rating scale designed to assess SA content and SA workload, was tested in a series of virtual environment exercises. Sixteen enlisted soldiers, working in teams of four soldiers each, completed four urban combat missions in a virtual night environment designed to simulate the experience of working with night vision goggles - NVG (PVS-7Bs) and aiming lights. In each scenario, a different approach for simulating this NVG environment was used. After each scenario was completed, each soldier completed the MARS instrument. This yielded estimates of the SA level and workload involved in four dimensions of SA - perception, understanding, projection, and knowing what decision to make. The results indicated that MARS significantly and rebustly discriminated among the different approaches, and these SA estimates were congruent with general estimates of SA content and workload while operating at night in the real world, and with the soldier's subjective rankings of the four simulated NVG environments. While promising, MARS must be validated against objective SA measures, both in the virtual environment and in the field environment. However, MARS seems to hold premise as a relatively unobtrusive and effective SA measure.

The present investigation sought to develop and field test two new behavioral measures of situation awareness (SA) that rated the content of small unit radio transmissions. Initially, a four-person team generated an item pool of 318 critical incidents of communication behavior, each intended to represent either an outstanding, typical, or poor level of SA on the part of small unit leaders. A group of 24 independent evaluators then rated the degree to which they thought each of the 318 items was related to the concept of SA. The 20 items having the highest levels of agreement among the independent evaluators within each SA level were chosen to comprise the Radio Communications Checklist of Leader Awareness (RCCOLA) and the Future Expectations of Likely Leader Awareness (FELLA) scale. Six field trials were then conducted with each of seven squad leaders and their respective squads. Based on their monitoring of squad and platoon radios, two independent raters completed separate RCCOLA checklists during each of the 42 total trials, as well as separate FELLA scales after the completion of each trial. Interrater agreement was generally high for both measures. Based on their methods of construction, we can also assume they possess some content-related validity.

The importance of 'situation awareness' (SA) in assessing and predicting operator competence in complex environments has become increasingly apparent in recent years. It has been widely established that SA is a contributing factor to many commercial and military accidents and incidents. Yet determining exactly what constitutes SA is a very difficult task, given the complexity of the construct itself, and the many different processes involved with its acquisition and maintenance. This volume brings together recent developments from researchers and practitioners from around the world who are studying and applying SA from a cognitive perspective. The 41 contributors represent many different theoretical perspectives, research approaches and domains of application. Each chapter has a primary emphasis around one of three main topics - theory, measurement and application and examines the considerable inter-linkage between them. To bring further coherence to the book, all of the contributors received draft manuscripts of those chapters most relevant to their own. Designed to be completely international and interdisciplinary, the authors themselves present varied perspectives from academic departments and industrial organisations from around the world, and from broad applications - with contributions from researchers in the domains of process control, sport, aviation, transportation, and command and control. The readership includes practitioners, academics and researchers within human factors, ergonomics and industrial psychology; Graduate and Undergraduate students specialising within these areas during their final year.

Discussing issues and concepts relating to human factors in simulation, this book covers theory and application in fields such as space, ships, submarines, naval aviation, and commercial aviation. The authors develop and expand on concepts in simulator usage particularly specific characteristics and issues of simulation and their effect on the validity and functionality of simulators as a training device. The chapters contain in depth discussions of these particular characteristics and issues. They also incorporate theories pertaining to the motivational aspects of training, simulation of social events, and PC based simulation.

This book focuses on the study of secondary task demands imposed by in-vehicle devices on the driver while driving. It provides a mechanism for researchers to evaluate how in-vehicle devices such as navigation systems – as well as other devices such as cell phones – affect driver distraction and impact safety. This book, which features the work presented by international experts at the 4th International Driver Metrics Workshop, in June 2008, offers a summary of the current state of driver metrics research. Edited by workshop moderator Dr. Gary L. Rupp, the book introduces vital information to support the design of in-vehicle information and communication systems (IVIS). Topics covered include: • Driver object and event detection • Peripheral detection tasks (PDT) • Tactile-based detection tasks (TDT) • Modified Sternberg method for assessing visual and cognitive load of in-vehicle tasks • Modified Sternberg method for assessing peripheral detection task and lane change tests • The relationship between performance metrics and crash risk • Characterizing driver behaviors observed in naturalist driving studies • Developing metrics from lane change test studies