Mark Wiggins

Macquarie University · Department of Psychology

The study tested the role of cue utilization and cognitive reflection tendencies in email users’ phishing decision capabilities in both controlled and naturalistic settings. 94 university students completed measures of their phishing cue utilization and cognitive reflection, a phishing decision task, and a naturalistic simulated phishing campaign,...

Objective The aim of this study was to examine contributions to sustained situational assessment over an extended period in the context of electricity transmission control. Background The electricity industry is engaged in a period of unprecedented change in the transition to renewable sources of energy. Changes in the nature and function of elect...

Background Ensuring that pool lifeguards develop the skills necessary to detect drowning victims is challenging given that these situations are relatively rare, unpredictable and are difficult to simulate accurately and safely. Virtual reality potentially provides a safe and ecologically valid approach to training since it offers a near-to-real vis...

Introduction: Amongst pool lifeguards, the capacity to identify drowning swimmers quickly and accurately depends on the interpretation of critical cues. However, assessing the capacity for cue utilization amongst lifeguards at present is costly, time-consuming, and largely subjective. The aim of this study was to test the relationship between cue...

This study was designed to examine the roles of cue utilization, phishing features and time pressure in the detection of phishing emails. During two experiments, participants completed an email sorting task containing both phishing and genuine emails. Participants were allocated to either a high or low time pressure condition. Performance was asses...

Double-checking has been used in high-consequence industries for decades. We aimed to determine the strength of the evidence-base regarding the effectiveness of double-checking which underpins its widespread adoption. We searched for quantitative studies of the effectiveness of two-person checking in industry sectors, excluding healthcare. We perfo...

Objective To assess whether the capacity to utilize cues amongst emergency physicians is associated with differences in the capacity to recover performance following an interruption. Background Interruptions are implicated in errors in emergency medicine due to the cognitive load that they impose on working memory, resulting in a loss of performan...

The study aimed to examine the role of, and potential interplay between, cue utilisation and cognitive reflection in email users’ ability to accurately (and efficiently) differentiate between phishing and genuine emails. 145 participants completed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), a phishing diagnostic task, and the Expert Intensive Skill Evalua...

Histopathologists make diagnostic decisions that are thought to be based on pattern recognition, likely informed by cue-based associations formed in memory, a process known as cue utilisation. Typically, the cases presented to the histopathologist have already been classified as ‘abnormal’ by clinical examination and/or other diagnostic tests. This...

Previous research has demonstrated performance inefficiencies among perfectionists, which may be mitigated via the adoption of ‘good enough’ heuristic-based information acquisition strategies; particularly in complex tasks. This study investigated whether training perfectionists to use reduced-processing strategies during decision-making could redu...

Purpose This study aims to examine the effect of cybersecurity threat and efficacy upon click-through, response to a phishing attack: persuasion and protection motivation in an organizational context. Design/methodology/approach In a simulated field trial conducted in a financial institute, via PhishMe, employees were randomly sent one of five pos...

Echocardiographers can detect abnormalities accurately and rapidly from dynamic images. This is likely due to the application of cue-based associations resident in memory, a process known as cue utilization. This study investigated whether cue utilization is associated with the ability to apply within-domain capabilities (dynamic) to more degraded...

Objective This research was designed to test whether behavioral indicators of pathology-related cue utilization were associated with performance on a diagnostic task. Background Across many domains, including pathology, successful diagnosis depends on pattern recognition that is supported by associations in memory in the form of cues. Previous stu...

This study was designed to validate a short-duration sustained visual search task for the assessment of sustained attention in process control environments. The task consists of 10 short dynamic scenarios, which require participants (N = 121) to monitor simulated operating power transmission interfaces, and identify system faults. A vigilance decre...

Background: Experts in medical image perception are able to detect abnormalities rapidly from medical images. This ability is likely due to enhanced pattern recognition on a global scale. However, the bulk of research in this domain has focused on static rather than dynamic images, so it remains unclear what level of information that can be extrac...

The utilization of cues is a process that underpins a wide range of naturalistic models of decision-making, often differentiating the performance of experts and non-experts. However, the domain-specific and idiosyncratic nature of cue utilization means that the existence of cues in memory, together with their application, has been difficult to asse...

Situation assessment is a critical skill amongst electricity distribution controllers but can be difficult to assess in practice. In the present research, we adapted a psychometric approach based on the principle that expert situation assessment engages cue-based associations from memory. Using consortium norming, we acquired performance data from...

Cue utilisation and situational awareness share similar properties since both constructs are dependent upon the application of feature-event associations in memory. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which cue utilisation and situational awareness contribute to learning a simplified, simulated rail control task incorporating an...

Although interruptions and breaks are similar insofar as they both offer a momentary recess from the primary task, the premise for the activity in which the operator engages differs. Interruptions impose the requirement to direct resources to complete a task, while breaks offer the opportunity for suspended goal rehearsal. The aim of this study was...

Phishing emails represent a major threat to online information security. While the prevailing research is focused on users' susceptibility, few studies have considered the decision-making strategies that account for skilled detection. One relevant facet of decision-making is cue utilization, where users retrieve feature-event associations stored in...

Phishing emails represent a major threat to online information security. While the prevailing research is focused on users’ susceptibility, few studies have considered the decision making strategies that account for skilled detection. One relevant facet of decision making is cue utilization, where users retrieve feature-event associations stored in...

Cognitive processes are broadly considered to be of vital importance to understanding phishing email feature detection or misidentification. This research extends the current literature by introducing the concept of cue utilization as a unique predictor of phishing feature detection. First year psychology students (n = 127) undertook three tasks me...

Background Double-checking the administration of medications has been standard practice in paediatric hospitals around the world for decades. While the practice is widespread, evidence of its effectiveness in reducing errors or harm is scarce. Objectives To measure the association between double-checking, and the occurrence and potential severity...

Echocardiographers are highly specialised, skilled practitioners who play a critical role in medical imaging diagnostics. Yet, little is known about the cognitive and perceptual attributes of experts within this domain. This study was designed to examine the role of individual differences in expertise. Specifically, the contribution of a domain gen...

New technologies are critical for sustained economic growth in contemporary organisations. However, the success of new technologies is dependent upon the relationship with users. Using a human factors framework, this article examines contemporary approaches to the assessment of human–technology interactions, highlighting the lack of integration and...

Although the utilisation of cues is widely recognised as essential for skilled situation assessment, it is a construct that is difficult to evaluate due to the idiosyncratic and nonconscious nature of cues. This raises risks for high consequence organisations where there is an expectation that operators are capable of accurate and timely situation...

Cue utilization processes may enable learners to acquire technical skills more readily even during the very early stages of learning a task but there is a paucity of applied experimental evidence as to when cue utilization becomes operative during the initial stages of technical skill acquisition. Civil and military remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)...

Objective This research was designed to examine the contribution of self-reported experience and cue utilization to diagnostic accuracy in the context of radiology. Background Within radiology, it is unclear how task-related experience contributes to the acquisition of associations between features with events in memory, or cues, and how they cont...

Objective This study was designed to examine whether cue utilization differentiates drivers’ consumption of cognitive resources during a simulated driving task. Background Outcomes from previous research have demonstrated that a general capacity for cue utilization differentiates cognitive load during novel process control tasks. However, it was p...

Introduction: Once qualified, drivers rarely receive objective feedback concerning their performance. This is especially the case in the context of cognitive skills such as situation assessment. The aim of this study was to test the construct validity of an online assessment of motor-vehicle driver cue utilization that forms the foundation for sit...

The present study was designed to establish whether a cue-based assessment of driving could predict cognitive load and performance during a simulated driving task. Following an assessment of cue utilization in the domain of driving, participants completed a moderate workload simulated driving task, during which cerebral oxygenation, eye behavior, a...

This study was designed to examine the role of cue utilization in the management of interruptions during a high workload, rail control simulation incorporating an implicit pattern of rail movement. The experiment required participants to manage frequent interruptive tasks while diverting and logging the arrival of trains. Measures of response laten...

Within high-risk operational environments, expertise has typically been associated with a greater capacity to extract and utilize task-relevant visual cues during situation assessment. However, a limitation of this literature is its exclusive focus on operators’ use of visual cues, even though cues from other modalities (such as auditory cues) are...

The objective was to examine whether ad hoc dyads with different collective social cue utilisation would record differences in performance and perceptions of workload during a simulated rail control task that incorporated distinct levels of demand. The frequency of two types of communicative statements was also examined as mediating factors: closin...

This research was designed to determine whether qualified practitioners’ cue utilisation is predictive of their performance during a sustained visual search task in an operational context. Australian Distribution Network Service Provider (DNSP) operators were recruited for two experiments, and were classified with either higher or lower cue utilisa...

This study was designed to examine whether qualified practitioners’ cue utilization is predictive of their sustained attention performance during regular operational tasks. Simulated laboratory studies have demonstrated that cue utilization differentiates cognitive load during process control tasks. However, it was previously unclear whether simila...

Phishing emails are a widespread cybersecurity attack method. Their breadth and depth have been on the rise as they target individuals and organisations with increased sophistication. In particular, social engineering in phishing focuses on human vulnerabilities by exploiting established psychological and behavioural cues to increase the credibilit...

Objective To examine the role of cue utilization in the management of interruptions during a high workload, rail control simulation. Background High-risk, high-consequence environments are characterized by cognitively demanding, time-critical activities, in which operators are required to manage frequent interruptions under conditions of high work...

Although the research concerning the problem-solving and decision-making strategies of expert coaches is well-established, few studies have sought to identify the specific characteristics that enable coaches to effectively solve problems and make decisions. This study provided a novel investigation as to whether the ability to utilize technical and...

HOW DO YOU DO IT? EXPERTISE IN ANATOMICAL PATHOLOGY: JOIN OUR HOW STUDY AND FIND OUT HOW Ann Carrigan1,2, Kim M. Curby1,2, Amanda Charlton3, Andrew Georgiou4, Mark Wiggins1,2 1Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; 2Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise and Training, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; 3Department...

This study was designed to examine whether cue utilization differentiates performance and resource allocation during simulated rail control tasks that contain implicit patterns of train movement. Two experiments were conducted, the first of which involved the completion of a 30-min rail control simulation that required participants to reroute train...

Objective: To examine whether differences in water safety-related cue utilization might be associated with differences in exposure to water-related recreational contexts. Background: A disproportionate number of incidents of drowning were attributable to recent visitors to New South Wales in the 2016-2017 summer swimming season. This was due to...

Objective: To examine the role of cross-task cue utilisation in the acquisition of situational awareness during the initial stages of learning to operate an air traffic control simulation. Background: Cue-based associations are an important component of situational awareness, a construct that is necessary for skilled process control, where the loca...

Remotely piloted vehicles or ‘drones’ have become ubiquitous both privately and commercially. One of the numerous applications for drones involves the search and rescue for specified targets. The use of ‘cues’ during target detection has been shown to improve performance and reduce cognitive demands in many environments. This study examined the rel...

This study was designed to examine the role of cue utilization, perceptions, and measures of operational experience in the interpretation of a scenario involving the interpretation of weather radar returns. A total of 47 qualified pilots completed EXPERTise 2.0, an online assessment of cue utilization in the context of weather radar systems. They a...

This study was designed to examine whether cue utilization differentiates performance and resource allocation during simulated monitoring and process control tasks. The experiment involved the completion of a 45-minute rail control simulation that required participants to re-route trains either infrequently (monitoring task) or periodically (proces...

Objective: This study was designed to test whether cue utilisation might be employed as a tool to assess the diagnostic skills of audiologists. The utilisation of cues is a characteristic of expertise and critical for successful diagnoses in clinical settings. However, neither in training nor in practice, is there a means by which the diagnostic sk...

The detection of critical cues is a hallmark of expert performance, and in high-risk settings, it can prevent serious incidents. A sensitivity to cues and a proclivity to rapidly acquire patterns during routinized tasks, however, can miscue performance when these patterns change. In the present study, 75 university students undertook an assessment...

Process control environments are characterised by rapid changes in work demands, the successful response to which is dependent upon the availability of cognitive resources. Since high cue utilisation is associated with a reduction in cognitive load and a consequent release of residual resources, it was hypothesised that participants with high cue u...

Objective: This research examined whether negative and positive arousal emotions modify the relationship between experience level and cue utilization among anesthetists. Background: The capacity of a practitioner to form precise associations between clusters of features (e.g., symptoms) and events (e.g., diagnosis) and then act on them is known...

The research tested whether systematic exposure to expert-identified cues would improve novice criminal investigators’ cue recognition and, in turn, decision making. Two studies are reported, the first of which was a pre- to postexposure assessment of 20 novices’ cue recognition. This involved testing novices’ recognition (accuracy and latency) of...

Objectives: To determine the validity and reliability of the peak frontal plane knee angle evaluated by a virtual reality (VR) netball game when landing from a drop vertical jump (DVJ). Study design: Laboratory Methods: Forty participants performed 3 DVJs evaluated by 3-dimensional (3D) motion analysis and 3 DVJs evaluated by the VR game. Limits...

The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between cue utilization, spatial aptitude and skill acquisition in learning to fly a simulated small Visual Line-Of-Sight (VLOS) rotary-wing Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The participants were 95 university students with no prior RPA or conventional aviatio...

This study extends the limited body of research exploring the association between psychological resources and performance under pressure. It was anticipated that participants’ general self-efficacy and resilience would positively influence skill acquisition rate more under high pressure, than low pressure. Eighty-one undergraduate students ( Mage =...

Skilled performance has been characterised, in part, by the capacity to accurately identify and respond to patterns as cues in the environment. The outcome is a reduction in cognitive load and a greater residual capacity to undertake concurrent tasks. The present study was designed to examine the relationship between cue utilisation and temporal pa...

Sustained attention is a factor in many work environments where operators intervene on a regular basis to ensure the safety and security of a system. Different types of activity during break periods may facilitate different levels of performance following extended periods of attention in these environments. The impact of five different breaks from...

Objective: To examine whether social cue utilization impacts the performance of ad hoc dyads through its relationship with closing the loop, a communication process whereby team members respond more frequently to initiating statements made by others. Background: There lacks unequivocal experimental evidence for any single cognitive-based process...

Objective: This study extends previous research by exploring the association between mood states (i.e., positive and negative affect) and fixation in practicing anesthetists using a realistic medical simulation. Background: The impact of practitioner emotional states on fixation is a neglected area of research. Emerging evidence is demonstrating...

The readback/hearback loop is a communicative protocol used in many high-risk environments to ensure that a verbal instruction has been heard correctly by a receiver. However, it does not necessarily ensure that an instruction has been understood . Using an international sample of hydroelectric power generation controllers, this study examined whet...

This study examined the role of cue utilisation as a basis for sensemaking in disaster recovery project management. Sensemaking is a critical skill that involves organising and prioritising information to achieve an accurate representation of project situations. A mixed between-within groups design was used to test three groups of participants with...

Sensemaking forms the foundation of expertise as it comprises the initial stage of information processing that influences judgement and decision-making. Two related studies were undertaken to investigate the role of cues in the context of expert project management. First, a qualitative study was conducted using the critical incident technique and i...

This study was designed to examine whether differences in cue utilization were associated with differences in performance during a novel, simulated rail control task, and whether these differences reflected a reduction in cognitive load. Two experiments were conducted, the first of which involved the completion of a 20-min rail control simulation t...

In the contemporary workplace, the design of interfaces has a significant impact on the cognitive demands experienced by operators. Previous approaches to the assessment of these designs have relied on measures of cognitive load to infer the level of cognitive demand imposed. Assessments of cognitive complexity may offer a complimentary measure of...

Diagnostic Expertise in Organizational Environments provides a state–of–the–art foundation for a new paradigm in expertise research and practice. Skilled diagnosis is essential for accurate and efficient performance across a range of organizational contexts, including aviation, finance, rail, forensic investigation, firefighting, and medicine. Howe...

In process control systems such as electricity power control, the success of a response to a change in the system state is largely dependent upon the capacity of operations controllers to identify, diagnose, and respond to the change. However, despite the importance of these skills in ensuring system safety and integrity, little or no information i...

The aim of this paper is to outline a theoretical and empirical case for the role of cue utilization in the cognitive process of diagnosis. Drawing on theories of skill acquisition, the case is made that the utilization of cues represents a critical precursor to the progression toward expertise but that the acquisition and utilization of cues is de...

The readback/hearback protocol is a communicative procedure used to minimize the risk of communication errors over the radio or telephone in high-risk environments. This protocol requires the receiver of a verbal instruction to repeat or ‘read back’ the instruction to the sender to ensure it has been heard correctly. It is a common assumption that...

This study was designed to establish whether a composite measure of driving-related cue utilization would predict learning performance in a line of sight Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) simulator. The participants comprised 50 first year university students, all of whom were current drivers and lacked any prior UAV experience. Participants initially...

Tablet devices are increasingly used as electronic flight bags in general aviation. However, there are risks associated with the use of such devices in the aviation context, particularly if the pilot becomes fixated and loses situation awareness. The present study investigated the effectiveness of presenting iconic cues and generic icons on a table...

The aim of this study was to examine the information acquisition strategies of expert and competent non-expert intensive care physicians during two simulated diagnostic scenarios involving respiratory distress in an infant. Specifically, the information acquisition performance of six experts and 12 competent non-experts was examined using an eye-tr...

The interaction between human operators and advanced technology systems has become increasingly complex, particularly with the introduction of automated and semi-automated systems. This complexity is evident in increasing demands for vigilance in what might be regarded as low stimulus environments. Using resource theory as an explanation of the red...

The primary aim of this study was to examine the role of cue utilization in the initial acquisition of psycho-motor skills. Two experiments were undertaken, the first of which examined the relationship between cue utilization typologies and levels of accuracy following four simulated, power-off landing trials in a light aircraft simulator. The resu...

In complex, high consequence environments such as aviation, the capacity to acquire, integrate, and respond to task-related cues is critical for accurate situation assessment and to avoid plan-continuation errors. The aim of the present study was to establish whether differences in performance on a series of aviation-related, cue-based tasks corres...

The operational control of complex systems such as power control and air traffic control is increasingly relegated to advanced technology devices with the expectation that operations controllers will maintain oversight of system and intervene where appropriate. Moreover, the centralisation of operations control has resulted in the oversight of syst...

Where occupational performance outcomes are difficult to measure, there is a tendency to associate expertise with years of experience and/or previous occupational position. Although useful, these indicators represent composite constructs that embody a number of different variables, only some of which may be strongly associated with the transition t...

Weather radar systems are an important tool in commercial aviation to safeguard the safety and security of aircraft. However, the utility of weather radar systems lies in the accuracy and the reliability of the interpretations of the displays. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether experienced pilots could be clustered based on thei...

In usability testing there is often an emphasis on accurate and timely task performance without a systematic consideration of the appropriateness or otherwise of the cognitive skills and processes that lead to that behaviour. Consequently, this paper details how the constructs of cognitive complexity and cognitive load can explain the extent to whi...

The study was designed to examine whether the availability of reduced-processing decision support system interfaces could improve the decision making of inexperienced personnel in the context of Although research into reduced-processing decision support systems has demonstrated benefits in minimizing cognitive load, these benefits have not typicall...

The readback/hearback protocol is a radio procedure intended to reduce communication errors in technical industries. It consists of the delivery of an instruction to a receiver, and the readback of that instruction by the receiver to confirm to the sender that it has been heard accurately. It does not, however, ensure that the receiver has understo...

Cues have been identified as important precursors to successful diagnoses among expert practitioners. However, current approaches to the identification of expert cues typically rely on subjective methods, making the validity of cues difficult to establish. The present research examined the utility of a Paired-Concept Association Task (P-CAT) as a b...

The present study investigated whether performance across a range of cue-based cognitive tasks differentiated the diagnostic performance of power control operators into three distinct groups, characteristic of novice, competence, and expertise. Despite its increasing importance in the contemporary workplace, there is little understanding of the cog...