Ergonomics Flashcards
1
Q
What is Ergonomics ?
A
- Designing equipment to fit the human body and its cognitive abilities
- Ensuring the machinery is designed to fit in with the way people think.
2
Q
What is the Multi store model of memory ?
A
- Memory is made up of a series of stores in a linear fashion and information flows through the system.
- Info detected by the senses and enters sensory memory.
- If attended to it goes to short term memory, if not it is lost.
- Info goes into long-term memory through rehearsal.
- If this does not happen, it is forgotten through displacement or decay.
3
Q
What is the Working Memory model ?
A
- Is short-term memory
- Central executive consists of the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad.
4
Q
What is the Visuo-spatial sketch pad ?
A
- Stores and processes information in spatial form
- Important in navigation.
5
Q
What is the Phonological loop ?
A
- Deals with spoken and written material.
- Perception of speech and production of speech
6
Q
How can short term memory be limited by the task ?
A
- Use of the sketchpad is interfered with by visual tasks, but not by verbal tasks.
- The phonological loop is interfered with by verbal tasks but not by visual tasks.
- If info is presented in different forms, you can hold more in your working memory, than if its in the same form
7
Q
What is Cognitive Overload ?
A
- There is a limit to the amount of stimuli that people can handle at any one time.
- Limited capacity to process stimuli
- Leads to Info overload, focus on the harder task
- Give most attention to intense stimuli or ones that require an adaptive response
- Capacity for attention can be temporarily depleted by prolonged demands on it that leave it overloaded.
8
Q
How should work tasks be designed ?
A
- Around the theory we have a limited working memory and a comparatively unlimited long term memory.
- Working memory is crucial when performing a new or highly-complex task.
9
Q
What is The Hawthorne Effect ?
A
- People to try harder and perform better when they are participants in an experiment.
- Individuals may change their behaviour due to the attention they are receiving from researchers
- Rather than because of any manipulation of the independent variable.
10
Q
What is Social facilitation ?
A
- Performance is altered due to the presence of other people
- An audience can have a positive or negative effect on performance.
11
Q
What theories support social facilitation ?
A
- Norman Triplett (1898) observed cyclists performed better when they were racing against others rather than against the clock. The presence of others doing the same activity enhanced performance.
- Later research showed just an audience, rather than competitors increased performance. But only if people felt the audience was evaluating them.
- Sometimes people perform worse on tasks when there are other people watching.
- Triplett (1898) saw children given a task to operate a small piece of machinery, either in the presence of others, or alone.
- Some performed better alone, others with people watching.
12
Q
What was Zajonc Social facilitation theory ?
A
- Zajonc (1965) proposed being in the presence of others causes arousal, leading to an increase in performance
- Used cockroaches in a maze and found that in general performance on simple tasks was enhanced by an audience whilst performance on harder tasks was decreased by an audience.
- They were 10s faster with an audience when they had to run in a straight line.
13
Q
What was the Aim of Drews and Doig’s study ?
A
- To develop an ICU display that presents vital signs trend information to support the detection and identification of acute physiological changes in patient state.
- To test whether improved ICU monitoring display reduces the cognitive load on the staff
14
Q
What was the method of Drews and Doig’s study ?
A
- 4 scenarios
- Had 5 mins to complete each scenario – early sepsis, septic shock, pulmonary embolism and stable state.
- Told to verbally evaluate the patient’s physiological status, interpret the data and recommend appropriate interventions.
- After the scenarios the nurses were asked to complete questionaries on the desirability of the new CVS display and the realism of the scenarios.
- Most important data was the speed of the response and the accuracy of the interpretation.
- If no assessment was given within 300s that was determined to be the response time.
15
Q
What was the sample in Drews and Doig’s study ?
A
- 42 registered nurses – all had critical care training and a minimum of one year’s ICU experience.
- 21 in each condition – experimental group and control.
- The experimental group used the new display
- Control used a simplified version without the trend data- they had to press a key to access it.
