Change Blindness and Its Implications for Complex Monitoring and Control Systems Design and Operator Training

Recent research on change detection suggests that people often fail to notice changes in visual displays when they occur at the same time as various forms of visual transients, including eye blinks, screen flashes, and scene relocation. Distractions that draw the observer's attention away from the location of the change especially lead to detection failure. As process monitoring and control systems rely on humans interacting with complex visual displays, there is a possibility that important changes in visually presented information will be missed if the changes occur coincident with a visual transient or distraction. The purpose of this article is to review research on so called "change blindness" and discuss its implications for the design of visual interfaces for complex monitoring and control systems. The major implication is that systems should provide users with dedicated change-detection tools, instead of leaving change detection to the vagaries of human memorial and attentional processes. Possible training solutions for reducing vulnerability to change-detection failure are also discussed.

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