A Comprehension Based Cognitive Model of Situation Awareness

For safe driving it is an inevitable precondition that the driver possesses a correct mental representation of the current traffic situation, the situation model. This mental representation not only involves a representation of objects and situational features relevant to the driver's behaviour, but also the driver's expectations about the future development of the traffic situation. A concept that describes the processes and the factors influencing them is situation awareness (SA) [1]. Until now the cognitive mechanisms underlying situation awareness have been far from properly understood. In this paper we propose a process model of situation awareness that views the construction of the situation model as a comprehension process comparable to discourse comprehension. Two experiments will be presented briefly that address some predictions derived from this model. The last section of the paper describes a current project that aims at implementing this model in the cognitive architecture ACT-R.