Differential effects of gaze sharing on situation awareness: evidence from coal mine monitoring

To address the situation awareness (SA) decline caused by information overload in intelligent coal mine monitoring, this study introduced gaze sharing, a method that visualizes eye movements for others. Using a 3 (gaze sharing modes) × 2 (SA gaze quality) × 2 (task difficulty) within-subjects design, we examined its assistance value. Trust propensity was measured beforehand to control individual differences. Effects were evaluated using eye-tracking metrics, SAGAT, SART, and NASA-TLX. Results showed that gaze sharing enhanced objective SA and, in complex tasks, reduced cognitive workload. Among the sharing modes, the fixation dot most effectively enhanced objective SA, while the fixation trail reduced cognitive workload but provided limited enhancement in objective SA. High-quality gaze information strengthened its effectiveness, whereas high human-machine trust increased reliance on shared cues and reduced SA in simple tasks. These findings demonstrate the potential of gaze sharing in industrial monitoring and provide a reference for designing human-machine collaborative systems.Practitioner Summary This study explored how gaze sharing affects situation awareness in industrial monitoring. A multi-factor experiment using subjective and objective measures showed fixation dot mode reliably improved objective situation awareness, whereas fixation trail mode mainly reduced cognitive workload. Its effectiveness also depends on gaze information quality and operators’ trust propensity.