With the ageing population's growing demand for mobility, this study examines acceptance of automated vehicles (AVs) among the near-elderly. By integrating perceived risk, behavioural inertia, and personalised adaptation into the Unified Technology Acceptance and Use Theory (UTAUT) framework, a new model was estimated using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Data were collected from 352 licenced drivers aged 55-64 in mainland China through a national online survey. Findings reveal that behavioural inertia is not critical, whereas perceived risk is the strongest negative driver of acceptance intention. Conversely, personalised adaptation and performance expectancy are the primary positive drivers. Mediation analysis shows that personalised adaptation significantly influences intention through effort expectancy, though not through behavioural inertia. Results suggest that AV design should minimise perceived risk and provide adaptive functions, such as frequent-route memory, driving-habit adaptation, and clearer system communication, to enhance adoption among this demographic.

Education on ergonomic monitor placement may help moderate thoracic flexion and neck extension in gaming. Chair designs which facilitate decreased posterior pelvic tilt, support the upper back and neck in forward-leaning postures, and encourage using the seatback may also be beneficial.

Direct augmentation onto flight deck displays presents distinct advantages for communicating information priority levels in aviation, especially in glass cockpits. This study investigated how augmented symbols, in interaction with pilot experience and target distance, can facilitate the communication of information priority levels in glass cockpits. A total of 20 pilot cadets and 21 professional pilots participated in a mixed-factorial study: 8 (augmented symbols: within) × 2 (pilot experience level: between) × 2 (target distance: within). Results demonstrated that certain augmented symbols significantly outperformed others in detection time to correct identification (DTCI) and first response accuracy (FRA). Expert pilots reported significantly lower mental workload and better visual comfort than novice pilots. Smaller target distances exhibited better DTCI and perceptions. Interactions among the measured factors were found. These findings offer practical implications for the design of aviation cockpits, particularly when information priority is delivered via flight deck displays.

Firefighting imposes concurrent physical and cognitive demands, whereas few laboratory paradigms replicate these dual-task challenges. This study developed an experimental protocol for inducing psychophysiological strain in firefighters. Twenty male firefighters (25.8 ± 3.4 years) completed a structured protocol consisting of a speech task (ST), a combined task involving load carriage with serial subtraction, and a physical task simulating hose-running. Salivary cortisol, α-amylase (sAA), dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), heart rate variability (HRV), and electrodermal activity were measured. Results showed marked activation of the endocrine responses, with significant increases in cortisol (122%), sAA (108%), and DHEA (138%) (all p < 0.001). Additionally, heart rate increased significantly during the ST (p = 0.007). HRV indices demonstrated pronounced autonomic modulation across stress stages. These findings support the protocol as a standardised tool for simulating occupational stress in firefighters, with potential applications in strain monitoring, protective equipment design, and wearable system development.

Operators controlling robotic systems for sequential manipulation tasks present cognitive loads that vary with how they specify intent to the robot. Limited evidence exists on how semantically mediated voice and gaze interfaces differ in operator performance, visual attention, and perceived workload. This study presents findings of a within-subjects experiment (N = 30) with three control modalities (hand gesture, voice, and eye-tracking). Eye-tracking produced shorter, more consistent completion times (M = 17.10 s, SD = 3.95), indicating stable and efficient performance. Voice Control was associated with more structured but variable action ordering and higher NASA-TLX Mental Demand and Effort scores, consistent with demands from spatial-to-verbal intention translation. Gaze metrics indicated distinct attentional strategies: eye-tracking showed lower spatial entropy and fewer fixations, while voice control exhibited broader workspace scanning. These findings suggest an association between attention-control channel coupling and cognitive resource allocation in semantically enhanced human-robot interaction, informing ergonomic hands-free interface design.

Change blindness (CB) during Primary Flight Display (PFD) monitoring threatens aviation safety, yet the roles of flight phase and parameter relevance remain unclear. This study examined cognitive-neural correlates of PFD change blindness in experienced commercial pilots. Experiment 1 (N = 14) found change location had no influence on detection performance but demonstrated a three‑way interaction among task load, flight phase and parameter type. Under high load, pilots detected attitude and descent rate more accurately during landing, and speed and altitude more accurately during cruise. Experiment 2 (N = 34) focused on landing with an auditory-load PFD change-detection task. High-relevance parameters boosted detection accuracy under high load alongside longer fixations. Enhanced Superior Parietal Lobule (SPL)/Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL) activation and modulated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dLPFC) activity correlated with reduced CB under high load. Findings indicate task load and phase relevance jointly shape PFD monitoring performance.

Multimodal warnings elicit faster response times than unisensory warnings in cockpits. However, how visual and auditory task demands affect the detection of multimodal warnings remains unclear. This study recruited 30 pilots and 30 control participants to complete a warning response task and an aviation visual or auditory task. The race model inequality analysis indicated that the multisensory enhancement effect decreased as the load increased. The analysis of variance indicated an interaction effect among modality, load level, and task type on response times. Results suggested that demanding tasks may affect the detection of multimodal warnings more substantially than that of unisensory warnings within the same modality. The slowing of response times to multimodal warnings may be driven by the more load-sensitive sensory component. The findings were consistent across groups. This study provides practical implications for multimodal warning design and theoretical insights into multimodal processing.

Backpack carriage is common among adolescents, yet its biomechanical responses during stair ascent remain unclear. This study investigated the effects of incremental backpack loads (0, 10, 15, and 20% body weight) on stair-ascent biomechanics in 16 male adolescents. Three-dimensional motion analysis, kinetics, surface electromyography, and dynamic stability measures were assessed using SPM1D. Increasing loads significantly altered AP-MOS, COM-COP inclination angle, vertical GRF, lower-limb joint mechanics, and muscle activation, while traditional spatiotemporal parameters remained unchanged. Load-related adaptations occurred during single-support, double-support, and swing phases, involving altered activation of key lower-limb muscles. These findings suggest that adolescents maintain external stair-ascent performance through internal biomechanical adjustments under increased backpack loads.

Trust in human-autonomy teams is dynamic and shaped by ongoing interaction, yet most measures rely on retrospective self-report, limiting detection of how trust and distrust propagate in real time. This study introduces and validates influence-an interaction-based metric computed as the average mutual information between joint and team-state time series-to track the spread of trust and distrust. Forty-five participants completed five simulated Remotely Piloted Aircraft System missions in three-member teams, with trust manipulated through communicative and behavioural spreading across congruent, mismatched, and human-versus-agent conditions. Influence predicted subjective team trust and objective performance during active spreading but not in a no-spreading control and showed strong reliability and construct validity. As validation checks, influence recovered known effects: credibility violations damaged trust most, and human sources outweighed agents. Critically, the influence-trust relationship reversed direction across contexts, revealing a context-dependent mechanism. Influence thus offers a real-time, unobtrusive measure linking interaction structure to team outcomes.

Automation has shaped aircraft design for the past seven decades, moving from fully manual control to highly automated systems. Despite this, pilots retain final authority for safety-critical decisions, which requires continuous trust calibration. This study investigated how algorithmic transparency influences pilots' learned trust in an AI-based cockpit assistant. Twenty-one commercial pilots were randomly assigned to an early transparency condition (detailed explanations of the AI's algorithms and performance provided before the tutorial) or a late transparency condition (the same information delivered after the experiment). Each pilot used the assistant during a tutorial and a realistic simulated flight. Mixed-effects ordinal models showed higher trust ratings for the early compared to the late transparency group during both tutorial and flight, and a larger trust increase between phases. In conclusion, providing pilots with timely, clear information about AI processes modestly improves trust and supports calibrated reliance.

Organisations are using crisis exercises to train their crisis management staff. Few studies have examined intuitive decision-making during exercises, which manifests itself in the form of heuristics: cognitive shortcuts. Identifying these heuristics duringobservation of exercises is complex due to the lack of a methodology for considering heuristics during exercises. To overcome this problem, we propose a methodology for observing linguistic markers to identify heuristics during 32 crisis exercises at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. This research has shown that our methodology provides a framework for identifying seven specific heuristics during crisis exercises. We conclude the article with the contributions of our methodology and prospects for further development.

This study used survey data to investigate pre-adoption acceptance intentions towards LLM-powered agents for non-clinical mental health support. The results showed that perceived benefits were the primary driver of acceptance. Additionally, user characteristics such as gender and prior attitudes towards counselling significantly influenced initial acceptance intentions.

Evidence on whether exosuits reduce workplace injuries is mixed. We studied whether exosuits can reduce back discomfort among warehouse workers. Ninety-seven participants were randomised to a control or exosuit group; for exploratory analysis, exosuit participants were stratified as moderate or low users. Surveys at baseline and four follow-ups assessed workplace discomfort, perceived back effort, usability, and adverse events. Intention-to-treat analysis showed that exosuit users had no difference in back discomfort intensity and incidence than the control group. However, exosuit users did have reductions in overall body discomfort. Exploratory analyses showed that moderate users had a 2-3-fold lower incidence of back discomfort than the control group, with 20% reductions in perceived back effort and no increased discomfort at other joints. Consistent exosuit use reduced the likelihood of experiencing low back discomfort. However, disparity between intention-to-treat and dose-stratified analyses suggests effectiveness is dose- and job-fit-dependent, supporting targeted implementation. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT05802914.

Current methods for evaluating team performance rely primarily on simple outcome measures and subjective ratings, which offer limited insight into the decision processes driving performance. This study extends signal detection theory (SDT) to teams, deriving sensitivity (d') and response bias (c) from simulation telemetry. Twenty three-person teams completed five virtual reality tasks varying in interdependence and time pressure while self-reported workload, conventional and SDT metrics, and verbal communication were collected. Team-level sensitivity distinguished conditions that conventional metrics did not. High time pressure reduced sensitivity relative to baseline before task scores declined, suggesting sensitivity may indicate early performance degradation. Response bias became more conservative under combined high interdependence and time pressure, reflecting team strategy shifts. SDT metrics correlated with workload, particularly team-task balancing demands (rs=-0.68 for d'). Together, sensitivity and bias characterise team performance more completely than accuracy alone by separating discriminative ability from decision strategy.

Mid-air gesture interaction is a promising input modality for in-vehicle information systems, but the relative suitability of static and dynamic gestures across vehicle functions remains unclear. Thirty-three licenced drivers completed a within-subject driving-simulator experiment involving nine in-vehicle function-control tasks. Vehicle-control stability, hand-off-wheel duration, gesture-execution fidelity, and subjective user experience were assessed, and linear mixed-effects models examined gesture type, task, and their interaction. Gesture type did not significantly affect longitudinal- or lateral-control stability. However, static gestures produced shorter hand-off-wheel durations, higher execution fidelity, and more favourable ratings of perceived validity, satisfaction, perceived safety, and learnability. Significant gesture type × task interactions emerged for interaction performance and all user-experience dimensions. Static gestures performed relatively consistently across tasks, whereas dynamic gestures were more task dependent. These findings suggest that the evaluated static gestures may serve as more robust candidates, whereas dynamic gestures should be selected according to task-specific gesture-command compatibility.