Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kwee-Meier, Sonja Th
• Kabuss, Wolfgang
• Mertens, Alexander
• Schlick, Christopher M.
• Harris, Don

Titel

Decision-Making for Adaptive Digital Escape Route Signage Competing with Environmental Cues: Cognitive Tunneling in High-Stress Evacuation Situations

Ist Teil von

• Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics: Performance, Emotion and Situation Awareness, p.128-140

Ort / Verlag

Cham: Springer International Publishing

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The relationship between stress and cognitive tunneling, i.e. the narrowed attentional focus, is long known. In evacuations, escape route signs have to compete with environmental cues, such as corridor width and lightning. New digital escape route signage can help to guide passengers situation-adequately under dangerous conditions, for instance fires. So far, little is known about the effect of cognitive tunneling on way finding in high-stress evacuation situations and its meaning for the potential to exert influence on direction decisions by digital escape route signage. Therefore, we have conducted an age-differentiated study in a virtual environment of a corridor system with digital escape route signage and competing environmental influences. 60 participants, 30 young (20–30 years) and 30 elderly (60–79 years), made direction decisions in a total of 40 T-intersections in three conditions. There was a low-strain everyday condition and two evacuation conditions with higher mental, emotional and physical demands. Significant differences in direction decisions were found between the everyday and the two evacuation conditions. The participants payed more attention on environmental cues in the everyday situation, while strongly focusing on the visual search for escape route signage in the evacuation conditions, suggesting a pronounced tunneling effect in these high-stress situations.