Systematic Procedural Error
Abstract
Even when executing routine procedures with relatively simple devices, people make nonrandom errors. Consequences range from the trivial to the fatal, with Navy personnel often operating at the more extreme end of this range. This problem has received surprisingly little attention from cognitive psychologists. The research summarized here examines such errors in some detail both empirically and through computational cognitive modeling. There were several key results. First, many such errors are sensitive not just to the structure of the task but also to the layout of controls and displays, contrary to the predictions of most current task analysis frameworks. Some such errors seem to be mitigable by simple layout changes. Second, a particularly pervasive error (termed postcompletion error) was found to be highly resistant to cue-based mitigation, and though an effective cue was found, the requirements for such cues are difficult to meet in field contexts. Finally, cognitive computational models constructed using the ACT-R cognitive architecture suggested that certain interface manipulations (removing state information, adding additional extraneous controls) which appeared major would actually have limited impact on human task performance, and these predictions were validated empirically.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA444067
Entities
People
- Michael D. Byrne
Organizations
- Rice University