Automation bias and errors: Are crews better than individuals?

The availability of automated decision aids can sometimes feed into the gen eral human tendency to travel the road of least cognitive effort. Is this t endency toward "automation bias" (the use of automation as a heuristic repl acement for vigilant information seeking and processing) ameliorated when m ore than one decision maker is monitoring system events? This study examine d automation bias in two-person crews versus solo performers under varying instruction conditions. Training that focused on automation bias and associ ated errors successfully reduced commission, but not omission, errors. Team s and solo performers were equally likely to fail to respond to system irre gularities or events when automated devices failed to indicate them, and to incorrectly follow automated directives when they contradicted other syste m information.