Patton, Colleen E., authorClegg, Benjamin, advisorWickens, Christopher, committee memberFisher, Gwen, committee memberOrtega, Francisco, committee member2023-08-282023-08-282023https://hdl.handle.net/10217/237011Automation can be introduced statically or dynamically to help humans perform tasks. Static automation includes always-present automation types, whereas in dynamic automation, the presence of automation is controlled by another source, typically a human. In static automation, trust, automation accuracy, task difficulty and prior experience with the automation all contribute to the human dependence on the automation. In the dynamic literature however, a small body of research suggests that accuracy and task difficulty do not impact the decision to use automation, but a combination of trust and self-confidence does. The difference between the influence (or lack thereof) of task difficulty in static and dynamic automation is unusual, and prior literature does not make a strong case as to why this difference exists. Through three experiments, the influences of task difficulty, prior experience, trust, self-confidence, and their interactions are investigated. Experiment 1 used a dual task warehouse management paradigm with a lower-workload and higher-workload version of the task. Results indicated that trust-self-confidence difference was related to automation use, such that higher trust and lower self-confidence led to more use. Additionally, the difficulty manipulation did not have an impact on automation use, but self-confidence did not change across the two levels of difficulty. Experiment 2 investigated four levels of difficulty through a dynamic decision making task with participants detecting hostile ships. There was a difference in automation use at the easiest and most difficult levels, indicating that if the task difficulty difference is salient enough, it may influence automation use. The trust-self-confidence relationship was also present here, but these measures were only collected at the end of the task so their influence across the difficulty levels could not be measured. Experiment 3 used the same paradigm as Experiment 2 to investigate how perceived difficulty, as compared to objective difficulty, influences automation use. Results indicated that perceived workload influenced automation use, as did the change the trust-self-confidence difference. The findings of these experiments provide insight into how trust and self-confidence interact to influence the choice to use automation and provide novel evidence for the importance of workload in discretionary automation use decisions. This suggests the importance of consideration of human operator perceptions and beliefs about a system and of themselves when considering how often automation will be used. These findings create a foundation for a model of influences on automation use.born digitaldoctoral dissertationsengCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.Text