Human Performance with Complex Technology: How Visual Cognition Is Critical to Enhanced Performance with Aided Target Recognition (AiTR)

Technology advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented or mixed reality (AR) offer the potential for advanced performance capabilities in the military and commercial sectors. However, the impact of utilizing such technology on users’ normative perceptual, attentional, and higher-level cognitive processes is not well understood. To take full advantage of current and future technological advancements, systems designers for the Army must better understand how human visual cognition changes in the face of the novel visual stimuli provided by these technologies. Here, we present an approach anchored in foundational cognitive research to derive principles for how humans understand, interact with, and are cognitively altered by the interactions between AI and AR. We will discuss our approach in the context of a specific application, Aided Target Recognition (AiTR). We will discuss a series of planned research efforts, the foundational findings supporting these efforts, and their potential implications for AiTR development.