The Use of Brain Evoked Response in a Critical Event Detection Task

Abstract

Brain evoked potentials (EP) were used to study subject responses to “critical events” (CEs) which were part of a series of stimuli. Both reaction times (RT) and EPs were influenced by the appearance of the CE. Longer RTs and a large late positive component of the EP were associated with the trials containing the CE stimuli. Intermediate RTs and late positive components of the EPs were found in a condition in which the stimulus preceding the CE gave information about the following CE and was also similar in appearance. While this is a laboratory test, it is similar in many ways to actual situations confronted by human factors specialists. EPs appear, then, to be useful tools in the system design and evaluation process.