Performance of a combined manual and decision task with discrete uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract A combined manual and decision task may be viewed as an arrangement of manual components, one or more of which involves uncertainty due to some input random process. An experiment was run involving a task containing a 4-alteniative choice element for the decision component. The other components involved motions that have been found to be typical of many operational environments. The probabilistic conditions that were varied over the choice element consisted of 6 discrete probability functions for each of independent (random sequences) and Markov dependent structures. The component performance times were found to be gamma distributed, but tended to independent normals as subjects progressed toward fully-learned states. For fully-learned subjects, only the decision component was affected by the uncertainty, and these effects did not vary significantly between the independent and Markov structures. Subjects employed a motion strategy at the decision component that was a function of the most probable...