Contextual control modes during an airline rescheduling task

Tasks in complex, dynamic environments typically require many activities including information seeking, communicating, coordinating, judging, decision making, and implementing decisions. This paper examines how humans organize their actions, viewed as a form of control, by analyzing the selection of contextual control modes during an airline schedule adherence task. The experiment varied time limits and introduced a sudden change in the task during the last run. After each run, participants recorded their solution, NASA TLX workload ratings, and self-assessment of contextual control mode. Participants reported operating in, and transitioning between, different contextual control modes in response to time limits. Contextual control modes did not correlate with performance or TLX ratings of demand and effort but did correlate with time limit, TLX-frustration and TLX-performance ratings. The results suggest that high performance may be achieved through different contextual control modes and imply that decision aids should support multiple modes.