Responses to Warnings and the Effect of Notifications in a Simulated Robot-Control Task

We studied the effects of changes of system sensitivity over time and of providing notification about these changes on the responses to binary warnings in a simulated robotic task. Participants had to decide how much risk to take based on the output of a binary warning indicator. Experimental conditions differed in the presence or absence of notifications about changes of sensitivity of the warning system. Such changes happened twice during the experiment. The first change was an increase and the second a decrease of the sensitivity, returning it to its initial value. Participants successfully adapted their responses to the changes when notifications about the changes were displayed. However, without notifications, they did not properly adjust their response to changes, and their levels of compliance and reliance were differentially affected by the change, indicating a distinction between these two dimensions of trust.