Measuring the Fit between Human Judgments and Alerting Systems: A Study of Collision Detection in Aviation

This chapter describes a use of the n-system lens model to evaluate the impact of displays on human judgment and to assess explicitly the similarity between human judgments and a set of potential judgment algorithms for use in automated systems. Specifically, the n-system model was used to examine a previously conducted study of aircraft collision detection that had been analyzed using standard analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods. The analysis found the same main effects as the earlier analysis. However, the lens model analysis was able to provide greater insight into the information relied on for judgments and the impact of displays on judgment. Additionally, the analysis was able to identify attributes of human judgments that were-and were not-similar to judgments produced by automated alerting systems. Moreover, the data highlight the utility of the n-system lens model for analyzing human interaction with automated systems.