| The Situated approach to situation awareness (SA) holds that when operators are engaged in a task, they hold only some information internally, particularly general and high priority information, and offload other information, namely specific and low priority information, to displays that they can quickly reference. This study was conducted to test the Situated approach to SA and validate some of the key assumptions of the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM), an SA measurement tool consistent with the Situated approach. Eye measurements were collected in conjunction with the SPAM tool to examine where Air Traffic Control (ATCo) students look when answering probe questions. The results showed that participants spent more time retrieving specific information from the environment than general information, supporting Situated SA and the SPAM technique. Likewise, there was also partial support demonstrating that high priority information tends to be stored internally, while low priority information is kept in the environment, providing further evidence for the Situated approach to SA. |
