Situational Awareness and Mental Workload: A Simulator Study

Abstract

This explorative experiment contributes to investigations on the fields of situational awareness and mental workload. Technically a combination of several research methods was used, such as subjective rating scales and physical measurements. All of that was carried out in a flight simulator with four different scenarios at the DLR. Results show that there is evidence for a connection of situational awareness as well as mental workload and task complexity. It was further concluded that there might be a certain threshold of mental workload that significantly influences the amount of situational awareness which gives prospects for further studies.