Talk:Situation awareness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portal

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, which collaborates on Psychology and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. Article Grading: The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

	This article is within the scope of the Aviation WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.	Aviation Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information and associated projects or task forces: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- B-Class-2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- B-Class-3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- B-Class-4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- B-Class-5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no This article is not currently associated with a task force. To tag it for one or more task forces, please add the task force codes from the template instructions to the template call.

Situation awareness (SA) is important for effective decision making and performance in many domains, including aviation, nuclear power, chemical processing, automobiles, air traffic control, medical and health systems, teleoperations, trains, space operations, maintenance, and advanced manufacturing systems. In these complex and dynamic environments, human decision making is highly dependent on SA — a constantly evolving picture of the state of the environment. Situation awareness can be described broadly as a person’s state of knowledge or mental model of the situation around him or her.

A general, widely applicable definition describes SA as “the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future” (Endsley, 1988). SA involves perceiving critical factors in the environment (Level 1 SA), understanding what those factors mean, particularly when integrated together in relation to the decision maker’s goals (Level 2), and at the highest level, an understanding of what will happen with the system in the near future (Level 3). These higher levels of SA allow people to function in a timely and effective manner.

An individual's understanding and classification of the situation he or she is in forms the basis for all subsequent decision making and performance. Even the best trained people will perform poorly if their SA is incorrect. One study of aircraft accidents found that as much as 88% of all accidents attributed to human error had an underlying problem with SA (Endsley, 1995). Other studies have found that a similarly high percentage of human error problems stem from poor situation awareness, which often results from deficiencies in the system capabilities or displays provided to their operators.

In addition, people can vary significantly in the degree to which they are able to develop and maintain SA in a given situation. Factors contributing to these differences include experience (which helps to build up relevant memory stores for pattern matching to incoming information), and individual cognitive abilities (including factors such as attention sharing ability, spatial abilities, pattern matching ability, perceptual speed, and working memory). Training programs can be used to help people develop better SA by helping to build relevant skills (including communications skills, scan patterns, and contingency planning) and by helping to build a large repetoire of relevant memory stores. (Endsley, 1995)

Endsley, M. R. (1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting,Human Factors Society, Santa Monica, CA, 97-101.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). A taxonomy of situation awareness errors. In R. Fuller, N. Johnston & N. McDonald (Eds.), Human factors in aviation operations (pp. 287-292). Aldershot, England: Avebury Aviation, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37(1), 32-64.

Could someone confirm how the "levels" come about? Are they built up over time, or as a result of stress and external factors, or are they down to the individual's training and cognition of the situation?

Krang 15:27, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Krang, The levels are defined in the research quoted above, basically as axioms so that metrics can be derived to evaluate various tools' ability to improve situation awareness. An individual's current awareness of a particular situation evolves as a result of many factors, including those you mention. I think that SA moves through the 3 levels in a straightforward way: when you get good enough at level 1, you start being able to work on level 2. That is, lower levels are prerequisites for higher levels.

Dan100, all the research quotes this as "situation awareness", yet this page was redirected from that title to the current "situational awareness." We're talking about awareness of the situation, not awareness that is conditioned on one's situation (like situational ethics). Shouldn't this whole page be moved back to "Situation Awareness" and the redirect go from here to there? If not, maybe a small paragraph describing the reasoning should be included.

-dca

[edit] Situation Awareness

The information regarding situation awareness has failed the test of parsimony. It could be that it is time to stand back and view the forest.

Situational awareness has been a preoccupation of performance improvement mthodologies for more than 2000 years (that we know of). It has been viewed as the core and basis of full and effective functioning. Certainly those competencies show up as the outcomes we desire as in the Endsley (1988) definition, amongst others.

Consider, (holding both physiology and training constant) we know that SA is mostly affected by emotions, that it comes and goes according to the persons emotional preoccupation.

What this suggests to me is that SA is enabled or disabled by emotional states. Blocked by preoccupation. This seems a reasonable perspective as the historical training mechanisms focused on awareness development through either subsuming the self or and rigorous mental discipline to achieve the unfettered mental state where SA is at its highest.

The redirection of attention from external to internal foci under stress was suggested by Lazarus (1966) in his dichotomous Direct Action - Versus Intrapsychic coping styles theory. Could it be that SA is simply another manifestation of the shift in mental state and a function of coping style?.

When the articles says, "starting from scratch SA can be described variously as knowing and understanding what is going on around you and predicting how things will change," how is that a contribution? It seems to me to just recapitulate Endsley's definition in more general--and less precise--terms. [JVD]