Situation awareness: understanding dynamic environments.
OBJECTIVE
We present a snapshot of the work on situation awareness, which involves operators' comprehension of the dynamic situation that they are monitoring or controlling.


BACKGROUND
Although human factors has always been concerned with helping the operator in his or her work environment, research exploded in the mid-1990s on one relevant construct, situation awareness.


METHODS
We discuss how a distinction present years ago, the product of comprehension versus the process of comprehension, not only continues today but characterizes different research directions. Research on situation awareness has benefited and can continue to benefit from an analogy to the better understood comprehension of narrative and expository text, although such an analogy between text and dynamic environments will ultimately have limits.


RESULTS
Situation awareness as a notion that organizes and focuses research efforts has rightfully spread to research in virtually every industrial domain, and it is an essential part of work on automation and design.


CONCLUSIONS
Work on situation awareness has had a ubiquitous influence on cognitive engineering and has even pushed the envelope of basic cognitive psychology into dynamic domains.


CONCLUSIONS
Considering situation awareness is also important in cognitive ergonomic issues relevant to training, teamwork, and the design of new human-technical systems.
Durso
Francis T
FT
Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051, USA. frank.durso@ttu.edu
Sethumadhavan
Arathi
A
D001364:Awareness; D032882:Comprehension; D006804:Ergonomics; D006801:Humans; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis