Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 36.5 CDM Probes
Goal Specification
What Were Your Specific Goals at the Various Decision Points?
Cue identification
What features were you looking for when you formulated your decision?
How did you that you needed to make the decision?
How did you know when to make the decision?
Expectancy
Were you expecting to make this sort of decision during the course of the event?
Describe how this affected your decision-making process
Conceptual
Are there any situations in which your decision would have turned out differently?
Describe the nature of these situations and the characteristics that would have
changed the outcome of your decision?
Influence of uncertainty
At any stage, were you uncertain about either the reliability of the relevance of the
information that you had available?
At any stage, were you uncertain about the appropriateness of the decision?
Information integration
What was the most important piece of information that you used to formulate the
decision?
Situation awareness
What information did you have available to you at the time of the decision?
Situation assessment
Did you use all of the information available to you when formulating the decision?
Was there any additional information that you might have used to assist in the
formulation of the decision?
Options
Were there any other alternatives available to you other than the decision you
made?
Decision blocking — stress
Was their any stage during the decision-making process in which you found it
difficult to process and integrate the information available?
Describe precisely the nature of the situation?
Basis of choice
Do you think that you could develop a rule, based on your experience, which
could assist another person to make the same decision successfully?
Why
/
why not?
Analogy
/
generalization
Were you at any time reminded of previous experiences in which a similar
decision was made?
Were you at any time, reminded of previous experiences in which a different
decision was made?
Source: O'Hare, D., Wiggins, M., Williams, A., and Wong, W. (2000). In J. Annett and N. A. Stanton (Eds), Task Analysis,
pp. 170-190. London: Taylor & Francis. With permission.
activities. The COTA approach uses interviews with relevant SMEs in order to achieve these aims. In
describing job expertise, the COTA approach uses videotaped protocol analysis of task performance in
order to determine and describe the knowledge required during task performance. The final stage of a
COTA analysis, developing CTA products, involves transforming the knowledge representation into
appropriate inputs for the specified application.
36.6.3.6 Cognitive Task Load Analysis (Neerincx, 2003)
Cognitive task load analysis (CTLA) is used to assess or predict the cognitive load of a task or set of tasks
imposed upon an operator. CTLA is typically used early in the design process is based upon a model of
cognitive task load (Neerincx, 2003) that describes the effects of task characteristics upon operator
mental workload. According to the model, cognitive (or mental) task load is comprised of percentage
time occupied, level of information processing, and the number of task set switches exhibited during
the task. According to Neerincx (2003), the operator should not be occupied by one task for more
than 70 to 80% of the total time. The level of information processing is defined using the SRK framework
(Rasmussen, 1986). Finally, task set switches are defined by changes of applicable task knowledge on the
operating and environmental level exhibited by the operators under analysis (Neerincx, 2003). The three
Search WWH ::
Custom Search