Development of a Taxonomy of Human Performance: A Review of the Third Year's Progress

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Abstract : The report briefly describes technical progress during the first year of a five year project to develop and verify a taxonomic system for the classification of human task performance. During this initial year, the major efforts on the project proceeded along four lines of activity: (1) review of previous taxonomic efforts, (2) development of an integrative model, (3) development of provisional classification schemes, and (4) development of a human performance data base. Previous taxonomic efforts were reviewed to provide guidelines and suggest approaches for the development of classification systems. An integrative model was developed to indicate which areas had to be taken into account in the development of a comprehensive task taxonomy. A provisional classification scheme, based on human abilities identified in earlier correlational studies, was developed to indicate the feasibility of using such an approach and to isolate some of the practical problems that might be encountered in the development of a taxonomy. Work on another provisional classification scheme, based on observable characteristics of tasks, has been initiated. The requirements of a human performance data base were defined to provide a resource and a research tool for testing provisional classification systems being developed.