Abstract
A survey was conducted to determine the opinions of sonar operators concerning the prevalence and judged impact of 19 stressors on various aspects of task performance: vigilance, visual information processing, auditory information processing, reasoning/decision making, perceptual-motor processes, general motivation to perform well, and overall performance effectiveness. The average rank ordering of the stressors by 212 Royal Navy operators with respect to adverse impact on overall effectiveness was as follows (worst listed first) boredom, fatigue, poor display/controls, command pressure, operator overload, poor work station, night watchstanding, heat, noise, lighting problems, minor illness, cold, motion, vibration, motion sickness, air contamination, risky peacetime operations, air pressure, wartime danger. There were differential responses among various subgroups of the operators. Some of the more important details are discussed in this paper.
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