Biomedical subjects

B H Kantowitz

Publications and source records attributed to B H Kantowitz.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1992

Selecting measures for human factors research.

Selecting measures is a necessary component of human factors research. Proper selection must take into account the representation problem (how is the assignment of numbers to objects or phenomena justified?) and the uniqueness problem (to what degree is this assignment unique?). Other key human factors measurement issues include subject representativeness, variable representativeness, and setting representativeness. It is difficult to create a single measure that captures essential characteristics of complex systems. Several examples illustrate how theory can guide measurement selection in such diverse human factors research as vigilance, turning off warning alarms, information requirements for military command centers, subjective workload, heart-rate signal analysis, and heat stress in nuclear power plants.

Ergonomics↗

PubMed1988

Fitts' law with an isometric controller: effects of order of control and control-display gain.

Twenty-four male subjects performed a discrete positioning task using an isometric controller. Two levels of order of control (position and velocity) were factorially crossed with two levels of control-display gain. Fitts' law functions were found for each of the four conditions. The velocity control conditions had significantly steeper slopes than the corresponding position control conditions, but there was no main effect for gain. A predicted interaction between control-display gain and order of control was found, indicating that the relative benefit of high gain is greater for velocity control than for position control. The reaction time (RT) regression lines had steeper negative slopes than those attained by Jagacinski, Repperger, Moran, Ward, and Glass (1980), who used an isotonic controller. This is in agreement with the results of Falkenberg and Newell (1980), who found that as average velocity increases, RT decreases. The components of Fitts' law were investigated, and this showed that the RT finding was due to the amplitude of the target, which covaried with average velocity, but was not due to the width.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1986

Measuring pilot workload in a motion base trainer. A comparison of four techniques.

Various techniques have been developed to predict and measure pilot workload. This simulation was conducted in order to compare four widely used methods: a visual two-and four-choice reaction time task, time production, retrospective multi-dimensional subjective ratings and in-flight verbal workload estimates. Two scenarios with different levels of difficulty determined by preliminary research were designed to test these techniques. The insertion of the secondary tasks did not significantly affect flight performance. All four techniques were able to distinguish between the overall levels of scenario complexity. In addition, the three secondary tasks and workload ratings obtained in-flight were generally able to distinguish among levels of difficulty for different segments within the scenarios.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1974