Decision support improves information integration and criterion placement in a multi-cue signal-identification task.

ABSTRACT

Identifying contacts in a military context can require operators to integrate multiple cues and to adjust response criteria to event base rates. The current experiment tested whether support from a decision aid would improve these processes. Participants performed a signal identification task that required them to integrate cues displayed as visual scale readings. In a static condition, participants saw a single set of readings each trial. In dynamic conditions, readings were updated over time. Base rates of signal categories were unequal, requiring participants to adopt biased response criteria to maximise response accuracy. Participants worked with or without an aid that combined cues and base rate information in an ideal manner. Support from the aid pushed participants' response criteria towards optimal and improved integration of dynamic cues. Decision aids may be especially useful when task demands require biased response criteria and when cues are sampled over time.

Applied decision making often requires operators to gather and integrate multiple probabilistic cues. An experiment examined the information processing steps in multiple-cue decision tasks that could be improved by an automated decision aid. Statistically ideal aids improved operators' response bias and information integration, although operator performance remained suboptimal.