Inspectors' Stopping Policy after Fault Detection

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to examine the stopping policy of inspectors after they detected a faulty item. Self-paced subjects inspected 113 computer-drawn geometric patterns. Inspection time and detection rate were measured. The predictions of reinforcement theory, expectancy theory, and a combined theory of the two were compared. The results were found to be consistent with the combined theory where, following the detection of a faulty item, stopping time decreases for the second and third items, increases for the sixth and seventh items, and then levels off This phenomenon is found consistently for different levels of defect difficulty and for different informed or feed-forward defect rates. Field-dependent inspectors, designated so by their scores on the Group Embedded Figures Test, were found to detect more faulty items.

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