Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics

This chapter explores the history of accident investigation and shows how the quest for understanding the multitude of physical, environmental, and behavioral factors found in transportation accidents has profoundly influenced views of human behavior and performance. The chapter also explores how a multidisciplinary approach to accident investigation has been influenced by a human factors perspective on transportation safety. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what recent research at the National Transportation Safety Board suggests may be the future for accident investigation.

Network-centric operations (NCOs), envisioned for future command and control systems in military and civilian settings, must be supported by sophisticated automated systems, so human-computer interactions are an important aspect of overall system performance. This chapter identifies 10 human supervisory control challenges that could significantly impact operator performance in NCOs: information overload, attention allocation, decision biases, supervisory monitoring of operators, distributed decision making through team coordination, trust and reliability, the role of automation, adaptive automation, multimodal technologies, and accountability. NCOs will bring increases in the number of information sources, volume of information, and operational tempo with significant uncertainty, all of which will place higher cognitive demands on operators. Thus, it is critical that NCO research focuses not only on technological innovations but also on the strengths and limitations of human-automation interaction in a complex system.

Prospective memory involves remembering—and sometimes forgetting—to perform tasks that must be deferred. This chapter summarizes and provides a perspective on research and theory in this new and rapidly growing field. I explore the limits of existing experimental paradigms, which fail to capture some critical aspects of performance outside of laboratory settings, and review the relatively few studies in workplace and everyday settings. I suggest countermeasures to reduce vulnerability to forgetting to perform deferred tasks, identify roles for human factors practitioners, and propose a research agenda that would extend the current understanding of prospective memory performance.

Fundamental knowledge of motor cognition is an important component in a human factors repertoire, and this chapter serves as a guide to the history, theory, and application of motor cognition research.“From intention to input” captures the scope of this chapter in that cognitive theories of motor control, neural control of movement, and the effects of feedback on movement are all discussed. The chapter progresses from an overview and history of motor cognition theories down to the neural basis for movement, then to an application of these theories via the study of specific actions. From there, rooted in the scientist-practitioner paradigm of human factors, the chapter covers applied considerations for designing control tasks and their associated inputs, taking into account individual differences in motor cognition and control and identifying critical issues in designing for input. General, applied guidelines are provided for use with current and future systems that have a motor cognition component.

Human factors is a critical discipline for human spaceflight. Nearly every human factors research area is relevant to space exploration-from the ergonomics of hand tools used by astronauts, to the displays and controls of a spacecraft cockpit or mission control workstation, to levels of automation designed into rovers on Mars, to organizational issues of communication between crew and ground. This chapter focuses more on the ways in which the space environment (especially altered gravity and the isolated and confined nature of longduration spaceflight) affects crew performance and thus has specific novel implications for human factors research and practice. We focus on four aspects of human performance: neurovestibular integration, motor control and musculoskeletal effects, cognitive effects, and behavioral health. We also provide a sampler of recent human factors studies from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Consistent with technological advances, the role of the operator in many human factors domains has evolved from one characterized primarily by sensory and motor skills to one characterized primarily by cognitive skills and decision making. Decision making is a primary component in problem solving, human-automation interaction, response to alarms and warnings, and error mitigation. In this chapter we discuss decision making in terms of both front-end judgment processes (e.g., attending to and evaluating the significance of cues and information, formulating a diagnosis, or assessing the situation) and back-end decision processes (e.g., retrieving a course of action, weighing one's options, or mentally simulating a possible response). Two important metatheories—correspondence (empirical accuracy) and coherence (rationality and consistency)—provide ways to assess the goodness of each phase (e.g., Hammond, 1996, 2000; Mosier, 2009). We present several models of decision making, including Brunswik's lens model, naturalistic decision making, and decision ladders, and discuss them in terms of their point of focus and their primary strategies and goals. Next, we turn the discussion to layers in the decision context: individual variables, team decision making, technology, and organizational influences. Last, we focus on applications and lessons learned: investigating, enhancing, designing, and training for decision making. Drawing heavily on sources such as the Human Factors journal, we present recent human factors research exploring these issues, models, and applications.