| dc.description.abstract | Fatigue is a serious problem due to its high degree of prevalence and its critical effects on safety-related performance in multiple occupational settings. In more developed economies, the problem of fatigue has increasingly become one of cognitive rather than physical fatigue due to the changing nature of many jobs. Several countermeasures to the problem of fatigue are currently in practice, with one of the most common being the use of rest breaks. In physically demanding jobs, task rotation has shown to be another effective countermeasure with the added benefit of maintaining high worker productivity as compared to taking rest breaks. While the use of task rotation has been explored in terms of benefits to physical fatigue and emotional well-being, very little research has investigated the use of task rotation to lessen cognitive fatigue. This research work, therefore sought to explore the use of this countermeasure towards tasks prone to cognitive fatigue. Vigilance tasks are one category of tasks with a well-established history of leading to fatigue, which is specifically labeled as the vigilance decrement. Vigilance tasks were therefore chosen as the type for which the countermeasure of task rotation was investigated.
In order to explore the effectiveness of task rotation, a series of experiments were conducted which made use of groups performing different tasks in-between two periods of vigilance task performanec. The groups differed in terms of the task performed during the middle “intervention” period to allow for the comparison of the relative effectiveness of each of the tasks (defined by their task demands) as a countermeasure to the vigilance decrement.
While the initial experiments were conducted with basic laboratory-type tasks, the final study sought to explore the use of the task rotation countermeasure within a more applied setting, specifically a simulated semi-autonomous driving environment.
Overall, findings from both the basic and applied experiments supported the use of task rotation as an effective countermeasure to cognitive fatigue, specifically cognitive fatigue brought about by the performance of a vigilance task. In terms of the model of task demands considered by the experiment, the contrasting of the dimension of predominant processing stage appeared to be the most significant contributor to the effectiveness of the task rotation as a countermeasure for a vigilance task. | |
