One of the main contributors to the human errors that lead to catastrophic injuries in the construction workplace is the failure to identify hazards as a result of poor attention or cognitive lapses. To address this safety concern, the present study used eye-tracking technology to assess how the association between work experience and hazard identification may be mediated due to inattention. A mediation analysis was conducted and tested using a bias-corrected bootstrapping technique with 5000 resamples. The results estimate the direct and indirect effects of work experience on the hazard identification skills of construction workers observing varying hazardous conditions. The results of the mediation analysis confirm that inattention—demonstrated via inattentiveness toward hazards—mediates the relationship between work experience and hazard identification. Specifically, though work experience and dwell time positively correlate with hazard identification, the direct effect of work experience on hazard identification is attenuated with the inclusion of the mediator variables in the model, thus suggesting attentional impairment offsets the benefits of work experience. The outcomes of this study will enable researchers and safety practitioners to harness real-time eye-movement patterns to identify the precursors of cognitive failure, deficient attentional allocation, and poor visual search strategies, all of which may put workers at risk on construction sites. The results also facilitate the provision of personalized safety feedback to workers and the design of training interventions that will address unique performance deficiencies in workers to prevent the human errors that cause injuries in dynamic environments.
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Toward Personalized Safety Training: Automating the Classification of Construction Workers’ Cognitive Failures
Safety training has long been considered a
promising method to enhance workers’ hazard
identification skills within construction sites. To
improve the effectiveness of safety training, such
varied features as a training environment, individuals’
learning ability, and lesson personalization have been
investigated. However, as records show workers still
miss hazards even after receiving safety training,
understanding the fundamental cognitive reasons for
unrecognized hazards becomes a crucial step toward
developing effective personalized safety training. This
study used various 360° panoramas of construction
scenarios to empirically examine 30 workers’ visual
search strategies and assess workers’ hazard
identification skills. Results suggest several cognitive
limitations caused failures in hazard recognition,
including attentional failure, inattentional blindness,
and low perceived risk. Based on these findings, this
study proposes a personalized safety training
framework to address such cognitive limitations to
improve occupational safety in the construction
industry
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- Award ID(s):
- 2049711
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10392306
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ISARC. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction; Waterloo
- Volume:
- 39
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 268-275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- The DOI is not currently available.
