Citation

Brown ID. Occup. Med. 1964; 14(1): 44-49.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1964, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/occmed/14.1.44

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since the Second World War an increasing amount of research effort has been devoted to the measurement of human characteristics and limitations and much of the work has been published for the guidance of the engineering designers. Many of the data have, however, been obtained from experiments using only one or a limited number of independent variables and these data may, therefore, not always provide reliable information on working arrangements in complex man-machine systems, because components of the system may interact unfavorably although they permit optimal performance when operated in isolation. It is usually necessary for the designer to run field trials on new equipment to find out how easy it is operated, how much training the operator requires, or what concurrent tasks the man may be given. It may also be necessary on occasion to compare alternative versions of the prototype equipment, or to determine the ease with which component parts of the complex system may be operated separately before combining them.

However, it often turns out that he cannot do this by measuring performance on this system directly, because the man makes no errors under all normal conditions. It is also particularly important to know have a man would perform under conditions of special difficulty or stress, since faults in the design of the system should then be more clearly revealed. But in practice it may not be desirable to reproduce actual conditions of stress, nor may it be convenient to attempt measurements of performance on the infrequent occasions when special difficulties actually occur.

The problem, then, is to develop a method of measuring the perceptual load imposed upon the man by any task which he can normally perform without error, in order to be able to predict points of special difficulty in the task when the operator is working under stress.


Keywords: Driver distraction;

Language: en