Sustained Perceptual Efficiency as Measured by the Mackworth “Clock” Test

Whittenburg, John A.; Ross, Sherman; Andrews, Tim

doi:10.2466/pms.1956.6.3.109

Cited by 39 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…It is apparent from the present experiment that the expectancy formation process is disrupted by intermittent noise and consequently vigilance performance is retarded. Baker (1959aBaker ( , 1959c The Whittenburg, Ross, and Andrews (1956) finding that females perform better than males in vigilance tasks was not substantiated by this study. Few studies that have included females report the effects of subjects' sex (Bakan, 1955;Ross, Dardano, and Hackman, 1959).…”

contrasting

confidence: 48%

“…There was lack of support for the Whittenburg, Ross, and Andrews (1956) finding that females perform better The result is a significant performance decrement from Period 1 to Period 2. Expressed in terms of the probability of omission errors, the following confidence The absence of commission errors can be treated as the committing of fewer than 0.5 false positives, so the maximum commission error probability is:…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 47%

“…If this is true, then intermittent noise will facilitate rather than reduce performance. Secondly, the validity of Whittenburg, Ross, and Andrews (1956) findings that females perform better than males in vigilance tasks will be tested.· The few other studies that have included females fail to report the effects of sex of observer as a factor (Bakan, 1955;Ross, Dardano, and Hackman, 1959).…”

Section: Jerison and Arginteaunu's Work Lends Support Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of ambient noise on vigilance performance

McCann¹

1970

Applied Ergonomics

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contrasting

confidence: 48%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 47%

Section: Jerison and Arginteaunu's Work Lends Support Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of ambient noise on vigilance performance

McCann¹

1970

Applied Ergonomics

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“…There is one variant of the clock test which should be mentioned for the opposite reason, because it did not prevent the decline in efficiency. This is some work by Whittenburg, Ross and Andrews (1956) Occasionally one of these flashes would be slightly brighter than the others, and the subject had to report this.…”

Section: Thusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Perception and Communication.

indicated¹

1989

Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews

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their action upon their common paths seem to lie at the very root of the great psychical forces of attention '. There are two reasons why this line of approach is particularly topical at the present day.The first of them is a theoretical one the current popularity of language, derived from communication theory, for the statement of psychological problems. Owing perhaps to the accident that psychologists working on hearing are naturally those in closest contact with telephone engineers, this popularity has been at its greatest in the auditory field. It may well be that too much has been expected from a purely linguistic device, which by itself will not provide the answer to the problems of psychology-Gregory (1953) has rightly pointed out that considering the brain as a computing machine produces the old problem of * atomism or Gestalt ? ' in the new language of ' digital or analogue }\ But new vocabularies do involve some shift in basic assumptions, and perhaps the point of permanent value which will remain in psychology if the fashion for communication theory wanes, will be the emphasis on problems of capacity.The latter, in communication theory, is a term representing the limiting quantity of information which can be transmitted through a given channel in a given time : if we send Morse code with a buzzer we cannot send a dot and a dash at the same time but must send them successively. An array of X buzzers would allow us to send x dots and dashes at once, provided we had a listener who could distinguish them.* The fact that any given channel has a limit is a matter of central importance to communication engineers, and it is correspondingly forced on the attention of psychologists who use their terms. Any hypothetical account of brain function must in future consider on the one hand the size of the brain (how many buzzers there are) and on the other hand the rate at which that brain will make reactions to a given set of incoming stimuli (the number of dots and dashes per second). * We will give an amplified account of capacity in Chapter 3, but still in non-technical and therefore inexact terms. For precise definitions of this and other terms in communication theory, reference should be made to the excellent glossary given by MacKay (in von Foerster 1952). All such terms are used in this book with MacKay's definitions, though they are introduced in popular language. 6 PERCEPTION AND COMMUNICATION This possibility, that one chain of events physically excludes another, has been somewhat neglected in physiology and psychology, though not of course completely. Sherrington is a siriking instance to the contrary, since his account of competition between different reflexes for common paths is essentially based on questions of capacity. But any account in which completely separate neural areas or pathways are postulated for different activities, neglects the possible use of the concept of capacity to explain the interference of these activities: and these types of account are common. Pavlovian theory, for instance, ...

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“…• Those vigilance studies that have included sex as a variable have employed relatively simple monitoring tasks and have generally considered sex • differences to be of secondary interest (1,3,9,10,15,17). Significant sex differences , when obtained , are typically manifested as higher order interactions with more primary task or environmental variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%