Adaptive XAI in High Stakes Environments: Modeling Swift Trust with Multimodal Feedback in Human AI Teams

Abstract: Effective human-AI teaming heavily depends on swift trust, particularly in high-stakes scenarios such as emergency response, where timely and accurate decision-making is critical. In these time-sensitive and cognitively demanding settings, adaptive explainability is essential for fostering trust between human operators and AI systems. However, existing explainable AI (XAI) approaches typically offer uniform explanations and rely heavily on explicit feedback mechanisms, which are often impractical in such high-pressure scenarios. To address this gap, we propose a conceptual framework for adaptive XAI that operates non-intrusively by responding to users' real-time cognitive and emotional states through implicit feedback, thereby enhancing swift trust in high-stakes environments. The proposed adaptive explainability trust framework (AXTF) leverages physiological and behavioral signals, such as EEG, ECG, and eye tracking, to infer user states and support explanation adaptation. At its core is a multi-objective, personalized trust estimation model that maps workload, stress, and emotion to dynamic trust estimates. These estimates guide the modulation of explanation features enabling responsive and personalized support that promotes swift trust in human-AI collaboration. This conceptual framework establishes a foundation for developing adaptive, non-intrusive XAI systems tailored to the rigorous demands of high-pressure, time-sensitive environments.