Effects Of Mental Simulation Training On Diagnostic Task Team Performance

Fault diagnosis is cognitively difficult for operators in complex industrial systems.Complex systems are usually operated by teams rather than individuals.Because system failures happen in a low frequency with unpredictable causes,team members are in urgent need to improve the ability and skill for fault diagnosis through training.Mental simulation is the ability of imaging the situation evolvement in mind,and plays a significant role in situation identification,hypothesis testing,and action evaluation during a decision making process.This thesis work evaluates the effects of mental simulation training method on team diagnostic performances in a simulated system.During the mental simulation training,mental simulation graphs were applied to help the trainees trace out their mental simulation process by wireframes.A shared mental simulation visualization tool was developed to allow the trainees to share their own mental simulation graphs with the others.Shared mental simulation was aimed to give hints to the trainees and strengthen their teamwork.Seven fault diagnosis scenarios were designed in the experimental study.In total 96 participants were recruited and divided into two groups randomly.The participants were trained and tested using two training methods in the simulated training platform.The performance data,the voice record of communications,and the screen recording of operations were collected for comparison.Experimental results revealed that the mental simulation training had a positive effect on team diagnosis performances.Compared with the teams received traditional training,the teams received mental simulation training could find out more key parameters,shorten the first-correct-hypothesis generation time,generate more correct hypotheses,obtain better accuracy of mental simulation,conduct more accurate diagnosis and reasoning processes,and have more confidence in diagnosis conclusions.This study provides some suggestions on team training design for complex industrial systems.