Lecture 1 'Introduction to Human Factors'

Question 1

Cognitive Systems Engineering emerged in the 1980’s in response to the shortcomings of what?

Answer 1

“human information processing” approaches to understanding human interaction with complex sociotechnical systems

Question 2

The Teneriffe ‘take off without clearance’ disaster led to what two things?

Answer 2

1. Less ambiguous Air Traffic Control messages

2. Cockpit Resource Management to empower all flight crew

Question 3

Explain why Libby Zion is labeled “the girl who died twice”

Answer 3

Death due to drug interaction, hospital staff unaware of her taking cannabis + antidepressants and prescribed medication that killed her. Blame was pointed, hospital was sued = healthcare industry missed an opportunity to assess what went wrong and work ot how to prevent future occurrences

Question 4

According to the Institute of Medicine 2000 Report human error in medicine accounted for how many preventable hospital deaths per annum in the USA?

Answer 4

Estimated between 44,000-98,000 every year

• (the same as a Boeing 747 crashing every 1-2 days)

Question 5

According to Brunswick (1956), generalisability of experiments depends on what?

Answer 5

the degree of match between constraints in the EXPERIMENT and constraints in the TARGET CONTENT for generalisation