Human Factors Exam Review - Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards based on Human Factors lecture notes.

Human Factors

A field focused on improving safety, productivity, and performance in applied settings by studying how humans interact with technology and environments.

Experts Limitations

Brittleness, inflexibility, expediency, mediocrity.

Brittleness

When they are expertise is not relevant/valuable

Inflexibility

When experts perform worse than a non-expert. Negative Transfer

Expediency

Efficiently learn how to do a task to get to a goal

Mediocrity

Not optimal performance

Reactive Human Factors Research

Investigating accidents or incidents after they occur to understand the contributing human factors, like a shipping company investigating warehouse accidents involving exoskeletons.

Slips (error of commission)

Intended action wrongly executed. Happens automatically.

Lapses (errors of omission)

You know what to do but failed to do the action, due to failure of memory or attention

Mistakes

Errors of planning or judgment. No slips or lapses.

Violations

Intentional commission of error

Participatory Design

A user-centered design strategy where users are actively involved as part of the design team.

Hearing Threshold

The minimum sound level required for a sound to be detected by a listener.

Automatic Task

Tasks that can be performed with minimal attention and without conscious awareness after sufficient practice.

Signal Detection Theory

A framework for understanding how people make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, distinguishing between sensitivity and bias.

Top-Down Attention

Attention driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and goals.

Bottom-Up Attention

Attention driven by the characteristics of the stimulus, such as a bright, blinking object.

Underload Theory of Sustained Attention

Explains performance decline in long tasks because they are monotonous and cause disengagement.

Overload Theory of Sustained Attention

Explains performance decline in long tasks because the task is hard, which causes fatigue and tiredness.

Expected Value Theory

A decision-making model that suggests a rational decision is based on the probability of success and the objective value of the outcome.

Satisficing

A decision-making strategy where the first option that meets the minimum requirements is chosen, without considering all options.

Heuristics

Decision-making shortcuts that reduce the need to compare options and make a fully rational decision.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to favor information that confirms existing beliefs or hypotheses.

Framing Effect

The way information is presented influences decision-making, such as emphasizing the chance of avoiding a fatal crash rather than the chance of experiencing one.

Expertise

Superior performance that experts exhibit in their domain due to extensive knowledge and experience.

Knowledge (Expert)

Information that experts can recall or activate quickly to respond or make decisions in their expert domain.

Stages of Skill Acquisition

The process of moving from the Cognitive phase (understanding the task), to the Associative phase (practice and refinement), to the Autonomous phase (automatic performance).

Principle of Redundancy Gain

Traffic lights indicate traffic instructions (e.g., stop, go) by both position and color.

Hick-Hyman Law

Reaction time increases as the number of possible choices increases.

Feedback (Control Systems)

Control systems should provide immediate feedback with minimal lag after user input.

Ergonomics

The science of designing tools, work, and technology that match human physical capabilities and limitations.

Anthropometry

The science of determining how the human body fits with equipment, a tool, or within a workspace.

Mistake (Error Type)

An error that occurs when someone does not know how to do a task.

Capture Error

A type of error in which a more frequent or better-learned action inadvertently substitutes the intended one.

Mode Error

Where a person try to type an email while the cursor is still elsewhere (e.g., in a word document)

Memory Lapse

Forgetting to lower the landing gearis this type of error.

Rasmussen's Ladder

A model that categorizes errors based on skill-based, rule-based, and knowledge-based levels of performance.

Cognitive Workload

The mental effort required to perform a task. When the demands of a task exceed cognitive capacity workload will be high.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Suggests there is a relationship between arousal/stress and performance and performance is expected to be best at moderate arousal/stress.

Transactional Theory of Stress

Stress responses emerge based on a person's appraisal of their own capacity/resources available to do a task and the demands of the task.

Avoidant Coping

Coping with stress by procrastination is this kind of coping style/strategy.

Situation Awareness

Person’s current knowledge/ Awareness of goal-related information + relevance for action

The Three Levels (or Stages) of SA

Perception, Comprehension, & Projection.

Goal Directed Task Analysis

Helps human factors professionals to determine the knowledge, skills, and abilities that an employee should possess.

Selection

The process of deciding whom to hire.

Communication Demands

This concept is unique to the demands of working within a team.

Differentiated Roles

Passenger in a car navigating is an example in which you and the passenger form have the characteristics.

Advantages of Analog Displays

• rate of change information,

• rapid extraction of information,

• emergent relationships, and

• better for monitoring tasks

Advantage of digital displays

Precise reading