Breaking Risk Habituation to Occupational Hazards using Virtual Reality Interventions with Aversive Sensory Feedback

建筑等高风险行业的工人在日常工作中会遇到许多安全隐患，这种反复暴露于危险而没有不良事件的情况下可能会使工人对风险脱敏。这种行为倾向，通常被称为风险习惯化，是工作场所事故的主要原因之一，人们普遍认为它反映了学习对认知和感知过程的影响。克服风险习惯化需要克服当员工默认了良好的学习和自动行为时可能出现的心理失误。为此，本项目将构建一个虚拟现实（VR）培训系统，该系统可以检测受训人员的风险习惯，并在模拟事故中提供直接的负感官反馈。该系统将根据行为和生理反应（如身体运动、眼动追踪、皮肤电活动）感知风险习惯化的发展，并通过负面感官反馈（如视觉、听觉和触觉）展示习惯化行为的潜在后果，从而产生干预措施。该项目的结果有望改变安全培训实践，使管理人员能够向习惯的工人提供更直接和有效的行为干预，而不是依赖传统的培训方法（例如课堂教学）来保留安全知识。该项目将分两个阶段组织。首先，该项目将创造完全自适应的体验式学习环境，让受试者体验vr模拟的事故，并完成厌恶的感官反馈，以应对风险习惯化的开始。第一阶段将包括：(1)设计和构建一个自适应的VR环境，激发学员的习惯行为；(2)识别标志风险适应开始/阶段的生理信号；(3)创建具有厌恶感觉反馈的VR干预，以有效减少习惯。在第二阶段，该项目将与德州农工大学工程推广服务部的基础设施培训与安全研究所合作，检查拟议的培训对高危职业的熟练工的影响。第二阶段将：(1)研究建议的风险适应培训对不同感觉适应水平的筑路工人的影响；(2)探讨拟议培训的影响在多大程度上转化为风险认知和受训人员的安全态度。通过将感官习惯化的严格心理物理评估与VR环境中获得的转化措施相结合，本项目的成功完成将为解决感官习惯化问题以提高工地安全性提供强有力的经验基础。更重要的是，该项目将把厌恶条件反射和注意力/学习的研究转化为科学的方法，以塑造人们在现实世界中的安全行为，从而为创建VR安全培训模块提供基础，以刺激行为改变。此外，本研究将制作一套关于安全管理认知和行为方面的课程，并将这些主题课程提供给不同的学习者，包括本科生/研究生和安全管理人员，并培养更广泛的关于工作场所风险习惯的意识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Workers in high-risk industries such as construction encounter numerous safety hazards during their daily tasks, and such repeated exposures to a hazard without an adverse event may desensitize the worker to risks. This behavioral tendency, often called risk habituation, is one of the central causal factors in workplace accidents, and it is widely thought to reflect a consequence of learning on cognitive and perceptual processes. Overcoming risk habituation requires overriding the mental lapses that can occur when workers default to well-learned and automatic behaviors. To this end, this project will construct a virtual reality (VR) training system that detects a trainee's risk habituation and provides direct, negative sensory feedback during simulated accidents. This system will sense the development of risk habituation based on behavioral and physiological responses (e.g., body movement, eye tracking, electrodermal activity) and generate interventions by demonstrating the potential consequences of habituated behaviors via negative sensory feedback (i.e., visual, auditory, and touch). Outcomes resulting from this project are expected to transform safety training practices so that managers can deliver more direct and effective behavioral interventions to habituated workers, rather than rely on conventional training methods (e.g., classroom instruction) for safety-knowledge retention.The project will be organized in two phases. First, the project will create fully adaptive experiential learning environments wherein subjects experience VR-simulated accidents,complete with aversive sensory feedback, in response to the onset of risk habituation. This first phase will include: (1) designing and building an adaptive VR environment that provokes trainees' habituated behaviors; (2) identifying physiological signals that mark the onset/stage of risk habituation; and (3) creating a VR intervention with aversive sensory feedback to effectively reduce habituations. In collaboration with Texas A&M's Engineering Extension Service's Infrastructure Training & Safety Institute, during the second phase, this project will examine the effect of the proposed training on habituated workers in high-risk occupations. This second phase will: (1) examine the impact of the proposed training on risk habituation across road construction workers with varying levels of sensory habituation; and (2) explore the extent to which the impact of the proposed training translates to risk perception and to the safety attitudes of trainees. By pairing rigorous psychophysical assessments of sensory habituation with translational measures acquired in a VR environment, the successful completion of this project will provide a strong empirical basis for addressing sensory habituation to improve worksite safety. More importantly, this project will translate research on aversive conditioning and attention/learning to scientifically-based approaches for shaping the real-world safety behavior of people, thereby providing a foundation for creating VR safety-training modules for stimulating behavior change. Additionally, this study will produce a curriculum on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of safety management, and it will deliver such topical lessons to diverse learners,including undergraduate/graduate students and safety managers, and cultivate broader awareness about risk habituation in the workplace.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.