Date of Award
5-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair/Advisor
Richard Pak
Committee Member
Leo Gugerty
Committee Member
Cyrus Foroughi
Committee Member
Dustin Souders
Abstract
Research in human-automation interaction has demonstrated that some individuals are more severely impacted by the negative effects of unreliable automation (i.e., exhibit lower performance) than others. A body of work has sought to explain this variability through individual differences, primarily investigating the role of working memory. However, not all studies have demonstrated a clear relationship between working memory capabilities and performance when using automation. Engle’s (2002) controlled attention theory of working memory posits that the relationship between working memory and other cognitive constructs such as fluid intelligence can be explained through a shared reliance on attention control. Studying the role of attention control compared to working memory might be a more parsimonious way of explaining differences in automation performance. The purpose of Study 1 was to investigate whether there was a relationship between attention control and decision accuracy with automation. Study 1 found that working memory was positively related to decision accuracy in the information automation condition but not the decision automation condition. This was due to the fact that those with lower attention control were disproportionately helped by high-level automation. The purpose of Study 2 was to compare the extent to which attention control and working memory predict variance in performance when using automation. Hierarchical regression models demonstrated that attention control to significantly predict explained variance in decision accuracy above and beyond working memory in most experimental conditions. This work marks a pivotal shift from a focus on working memory to the importance of attention in human-automation interaction.
Recommended Citation
Textor, Claire, "The Role of Attention Control in Automation Performance" (2023). All Dissertations. 3298.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/3298
Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0002-2831-4621