Kyle Wilson

• PhD
• Senior Scientist & Team Lead at Seeing Machines

Objective: We investigated whether losses of inhibitory control could be responsible for some friendly-fire incidents. Background: Several factors are commonly cited to explain friendly-fire incidents, but failure of inhibitory control has not yet been explored. The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) could be a valid model for inhibition f...

Vehicles are currently being developed and sold with increasing levels of connectivity and automation. As with all networked computing devices, increased connectivity often results in a heightened risk of a cyber security attack. Furthermore, increased automation exacerbates any risk by increasing the opportunities for the adversary to implement a...

Purpose: Mental fatigue has been shown to impair subsequent physical performance in continuous and discontinuous exercise. However, its influence on subsequent fine-motor performance in an applied setting (e.g., marksmanship for trained soldiers) is relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether prior mental fatigue influe...

Contextual investigations of automated vehicle technology have so far been rare, however they are crucial to uncover the challenges that exist around its acceptance and safe use. Twenty-one drivers used a partially automated vehicle on a public highway in unaltered traffic conditions, while their behaviour was observed. Subjective measures of techn...

Providing quantitative feedback on performance in real-time appears to improve performance in a strength training context. Less is known about the associated effects on psychological variables. Fifteen rugby athletes performed a strength training exercise both with and without objective performance feedback provided in real-time. Feedback increased...

This paper consolidates insights from an expert workshop and presents overarching design concepts on how to effectively integrate driver monitoring systems (DMS) into vehicle interfaces. The safety potential of DMS hinges on effective integration with a vehicle’s human–machine interface (HMI), enabling a broader range of response options offered by...

Objective This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of fatigue detection technology (FDT) cabin alarms in reducing fatigue events in rural truck drivers, assess the accuracy in detecting fatigue events alarms and examine whether drivers habituate to alarms over time. Methods Longitudinal naturalistic study of fatigue events before and after al...

Objective: The paper aims to integrate interior and exterior sensing signals to explore gaze-context connections for more context-aware driver attention management. Background: Driving context is important for crash risk assessment, but little is known about how it modulates attention requirements for developing driver monitoring systems. Method: T...

Objective: examine the prevalence of driver distraction in naturalistic driving when implementing European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP)-defined distraction behaviours. Background: The 2023 introduction of Occupant Status monitoring (OSM) into Euro NCAP will accelerate uptake of Driver State Monitoring (DSM). Euro NCAP outlines distract...

Eye-tracking has historically been proposed as a tool to provide insight into pilot performance, although its transition from scientific curiosity to a practical device has been challenging. Advancing technology has recently opened the possibility of deploying eye-tracking measurements for operational use in flight training, thus allowing for impro...

Objective The study aims to model driver perception across the visual field in dynamic, real-world highway driving. Background Peripheral vision acquires information across the visual field and guides a driver’s information search. Studies in naturalistic settings are lacking however, with most research having been conducted in controlled simulati...

Objective Research shows frequent mobile phone use in vehicles but says little regarding how drivers hold their phone. This knowledge would inform countermeasures and benefit law enforcement in detecting phone use. Methods 934 participants were surveyed over phone-use prevalence, handedness, traffic-direction, and where they held their device. Re...

Objective This study aimed to investigate the impacts of feature selection on driver cognitive distraction (CD) detection and validation in real-world nonautomated and Level 2 automated driving scenarios. Background Real-time driver state monitoring is critical to promote road user safety. Method Twenty-four participants were recruited to drive a...

Objective The purpose of this investigation was to elucidate the role of button-response complexity to targets in a response inhibition task. Background Response inhibition is the ability to correctly inhibit an overt response to a target. The U.S. military is actively pursuing development of armed, combat robots as a force multiplier, which may p...

Purpose:: Feedback can enhance acute physical performance. However, the effects of feedback on physical adaptation has received little attention. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of feedback during a four-week training programme on jump, sprint and strength adaptations. Methods:: Twenty-eight semi-professional mal...

When performing resistance training, verbal kinematic feedback and visual kinematic feedback are known to enhance performance. In addition, providing verbal encouragement can assist in the attenuation of fatigue. However, the effects of these forms of feedback have never been compared. Consequently, this study aimed to quantify the effects of verba...

Providing objective visual feedback on performance during resistance exercise has been shown to acutely improve performance as well as enhance self-reported levels of motivation and competitiveness. The majority of research has only tested this over single sets of exercise with male-only cohorts which, however, potentially limits the real-world app...

Despite widespread use in clinical and experimental contexts, debate continues over whether or not the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) successfully measures sustained attention. Altering physical aspects of the response movement required to SART stimuli may help identify whether performance is a better measure of perceptual decoupling,...

It is unknown whether instantaneous visual feedback of resistance training outcomes can enhance barbell velocity in younger athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of visual feedback on mean concentric barbell velocity in the back squat, and to identify changes in motivation, competitiveness, and perceived workloa...

As cyber is increasingly integrated into military operations, conducting military cyber operations requires the effective coordination of teams. This interdisciplinary contribution discusses teams working in, and in relation to the cyber domain as a part of a larger socio-technical system, and the need for a better understanding of the human factor...

A smartphone-based traffic light assistant application, EnLighten, was investigated for its ability to improve subjective driving experience and safely reduce the time it took drivers to ‘move off’ at signalised intersections. Five drivers participated in four trials over a period of three weeks. Testing took place on public roads in unaltered norm...

Forty-five participants performed a vigilance task during which they were required to respond to a critical signal at a local feature level, while the global display was altered between groups (either a circle, a circle broken apart and reversed, or a reconnected figure). The shape in two of the groups formed a configurative whole (the circle and r...

The sustained attention to response task (SART) usefulness as a measure of sustained attention has been questioned. The SART may instead be a better measure of other psychological processes and could prove useful in understanding some real-world behaviours. Thirty participants completed four Go/No-Go response tasks much like the SART, with Go-stimu...

The effects of physical activity on cognition and the effects of cognitive load on physical activity are complex. Both the nature of the physical activity and cognitive task may influence the interactive effects of performing a physical task while also performing a cognitive task. In a previous study examining the impact of increasing cognitive loa...

The impact of negative affect on working memory performance is unclear. Visuospatial and verbal working memory are critical in many settings, but may be impaired during exposure to negative stimuli. In Experiment 1, the impact of task-irrelevant negative picture stimuli on verbal compared to visuospatial working memory performance was investigated....

The impact of anxiety-provoking stimuli on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997), and response inhibition more generally, is currently unclear. Participants completed four SARTs embedded with picture stimuli of two levels of emotion (negative or neutral) and two levels of task-relevance...

The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate whether the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997), a high Go, low No-Go response task, may provide an empirical model of friendly fire accidents in some battle scenarios. A growing body of evidence suggests that rather than sustained attentio...

This paper discusses how four key cognitive biases may play a role in mistaken-for-game hunting accidents: The availability heuristic, expectancy, confirmation bias, and optimism bias. Experience may not safeguard a hunter, and may in fact do the opposite. More work needs to be conducted to verify the conclusions of this white paper, for which a hu...

Sixty participants performed a sustained attention task in which they were required to perform either global or local feature discrimination. Two groups required just one type of discrimination, while the remaining two groups started on one type of discrimination before transitioning to the other type halfway through. A transition resulted in worse...

Sixty-one participants performed a sustained attention task in which they were required to respond to a critical signal requiring feature discrimination. Three separate groups performed the task with different global display configurations. The local feature elements (directional arrow shapes) were displayed on either a circle, a circle broken apar...

Anxiety can have positive effects on some aspects of cognition and negative effects on others. The current study investigated whether task-relevant anxiety could improve people's ability to withhold responses in a response inhibition task. Sixty-seven university students completed a modified and an unmodified version of the Sustained Attention to R...

Performance on the sustained attention to response task (SART) is often characterized by a speed-accuracy trade-off, and SART performance may be influenced by strategic factors (Head and Helton Conscious Cogn 22: 913-919, 2013). Previous research indicates a significant difference between reliable and unreliable warning cues on response times and e...

Losses of inhibitory control may be partly responsible for some friendly fire incidents. The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997) may provide an appropriate empirical model for this. The current investigation aimed to provide an ecologically valid application of the SART to a small arms sim...

As text-based communication increases in the civilian and military workplace (Finomore, Popik, Castle, & Dallman, 2010), so does the potential to encounter text-speak. It has been proposed that processing text-speak (I wll tlk 2 u l8tr, I will talk to you later) comes at a cognitive cost (Head, Helton, Russell, & Neumann, 2012). To the authors’ kno...

Individual differences (e.g., extroversion) have been noted to influence performance on sustained attention tasks (Davies & Parasuraman, 1982). It has been proposed that the sustained attention to response task (SART) is a valid measure of lapses in attention and has been extensively used in attention studies (Manly, Robertson, Galloway, & Hawki...

Factors such as poor visibility, lack of situation awareness, and bad communication have been shown to contribute to friendly fire incidents. However, to the authors’ knowledge, an individual’s ability to inhibit their motor response of shooting when a non-target is presented has not been investigated. This phenomenon has been modeled empiricall...

Cognitive engineering is the application of cognitive psychology and related disciplines to the design and operation of human-machine systems. Cognitive engineering combines both detailed and close study of the human worker in the actual work context and the study of the worker in more controlled environments. Cognitive engineering combines multipl...

Technical advances in remotely operated vehicles (eg. drones, ground robots) have seen an increase in their use in a variety of work settings , including remote searches and damage assessment. In the case of disaster response and management, uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) and uninhabited ground vehicles (UGVs) could be extremely useful. For exa...