Change blindness, a failure to detect changes in visual scenes, can impact workers' ability to detect hazards and compromise safety on the jobsite. Examining the relationship between this phenomenon and individual characteristics (e.g., personality variables, safety training) may conceivably support safety managers in predicting susceptibility to change blindness. However, little is known regarding variables influencing change blindness in construction safety. To address this knowledge gap, this study examined the association between individual factors such as age, work experience, sex, formal safety training, personality, mindfulness, and injury exposure with change blindness in construction safety settings. To this end, a change detection experiment was conducted to measure participants' response time and accuracy rate. Hierarchical agglomerative clustering was used to group the continuous dependent variables into analytical categories. Logistic regression was then used to analyze the association of individual factors with both response time and accuracy rate. The results revealed that age and the personality traits of agreeableness (+) and conscientiousness (-) were associated with response time, while mindfulness (+) and injury exposure (+) were associated with the accuracy rate. The findings of this study advance our understanding of variables that impact change blindness. The association of individual factors with change detection performance in construction provides a foundation for subsequent research to understand hazard identification in dynamic environments better. Regarding practice, these individual factors can be used as precursors to predict the susceptibility of workers to change blindness in construction; foreseeably, industry professionals can also utilize the predictive power of these variables to plan preventive actions on the jobsite.

Construction industry has the largest number of preventable fatal injuries, providing effective safety training practices can play a significant role in reducing the number of fatalities. Building on recent advancements in virtual reality-based training, we devised a novel approach to synthesize construction safety training scenarios to train users on how to proficiently inspect the potential hazards on construction sites in virtual reality. Given the training specifications such as individual training preferences and target training time, we synthesize personalized VR training scenarios through an optimization approach. We validated our approach by conducting user studies where users went through our personalized guidance VR training, free exploration VR training, or slides training. Results suggest that personalized guidance VR training approach can more effectively improve users' construction hazard inspection skills.

Due to the dynamic nature of construction sites, workers face constant changes, including changes that endanger their safety. Failing to notice significant changes to visual scenes-known as change blindness-can potentially put construction workers into harm's way. Hence, understanding the inability or failure to detect change is critical to improving worker safety. No study to date, however, has empirically examined change blindness in relation to construction safety. To address this critical knowledge gap, this study examined the effects of change types (safety-relevant or safety-irrelevant) and work experience on hazard-identification performance, with a focus on fall-related hazards. The experiment required participants (construction workers, students with experience, and students with no work experience) to detect changes between two construction scenario images that alternated repeatedly and then identify any changes. The results demonstrated that, generally, safety-relevant changes were detected significantly faster than safety-irrelevant changes, with certain types of fall hazards (e.g., unprotected edge hazards) being detected faster than other types (e.g., ladder hazards). The study also found that more experienced subjects (i.e., workers) achieved higher accuracy in detecting relevant changes, but their mean response time was significantly longer than that of students with and without experience. Collectively, these findings indicated that change blindness may influence changes in workers' situation awareness on jobsites. Demonstrating workers' susceptibility to change blindness can help raise awareness during worker trainings about how workers allocate and maintain attention. (C) 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.

The construction industry still leads the world as one of the sectors with the most work-related injuries and worker fatalities. Considering that one of the barriers to improving construction safety is its stressful working environment, which increases risk of inattentiveness among construction workers, safety managers seek practices to measure and enhance worker focus and reduce stress, such as mindfulness. Considering the important role of mindfulness in curbing frequency and severity of incidents, researchers are interested in understanding the relationship between mindfulness and other common, more static human characteristics. As a result, this study examines the relationship between mindfulness and such variables as personality and national culture in the context of construction safety. Collecting data from 155 participants, this study used elastic net regression to examine the influence of independent (i.e., personality and national culture) variables on the dependent (i.e., mindfulness) variable. To validate the results of the regression, 10-fold cross-validation was conducted. The results reveal that certain personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness) and national cultural dimensions (e.g., uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and collectivism) can be used as predictors of mindfulness for individuals. Since mindfulness has shown to increase safety and work performance, safety managers can utilize these variables to identify at-risk workers so that additional safety training can be provided to enhance work performance and improve safety outcomes. The results of this study will inform future work into translating personal and mindfulness characteristics into factors that predict specific elements of unsafe human behaviors.

The construction industry still leads the world as one of the sectors with the most work-related injuries and worker fatalities. Recent studies show that both a state of mindfulness and various personality traits contribute to individuals' safety and work performance. This study examines the relationship between mindfulness and personality by measuring the mindfulness state of individuals against their personality traits. To achieve this objective, data were collected from a sample of 55 undergraduate students at George Mason University. Scores from the Big Five Inventory were ranked by each trait's score (independent variable) and split into three groups: high, moderate, and low scores. The corresponding mindfulness scores (dependent variable) were analyzed to determine the relationship between high/low personality traits and mindfulness. Comparing the high/low groups using statistical analyses showed that three of the five personality traits-conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism-significantly correlate with individuals' higher mindfulness scores. As mindfulness has been shown to increase individual safety and work performance and to reduce stress, the results of this study help inform future work into translating personality and mindfulness characteristics into factors that predict specific elements of unsafe human behaviors.