Building a better model of human-automation interaction

People generally make decisions using two ways of thinking: They think consciously, deliberate for a while, and try to use logic to figure out what action to take—referred to as analytical cognition. Or people unconsciously recognize patterns in certain situations, get a “gut feeling,” and take action based on that feeling; in other words, they use intuitive cognition. In his February Human Factors paper, “Intuitive Cognition and Models of Human-Automation Interaction,” Robert Earl Patterson found that current taxonomies used to classify systems or teams of humans and computers include only conscious, deliberation-type thinking and neglect the role of intuitive cognition. Patterson suggests that automated systems of the future—such as smart cars, homes, and devices—may be improved if they incorporated both intuitive and analytical cognition. In the paper, he presents a new dual-processing taxonomy based on the work of Raja Parasuraman and colleagues in 2000.