A Framework of Automation Use

Although dramatic increases in the use of automation in recent years have occurred across society, research has found that human operators often under-use (disuse) and overly rely on (misuse) automated aids (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). A general framework of automation use, which proposes that cognitive, social, and motivational processes may lead to productivity loss of humancomputer teams, is developed, described, and defended with anecdotal and experimental findings. More specifically, automation use is predicted to be affected by the difference between the reliability of the automated aid and the reliability of manual operation, task difficulty, the number of tasks, intere~t in the task, fatigue, cognitive overhead, the rewards for successful performance, the penalties for unsuccessful performance, and several cognitive biases. Suggestions for future research are briefly discussed.