Stress, workload, and fatigue, Eds. Peter A. Hancock and Paula A. Desmond, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Mahwah, NJ, 2001, 682 pp., Hardcover: ISBN 0-8058-3178-9, $75.

✍ Scribed by Vincent G. Duffy

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 10 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1090-8471
• DOI: 10.1002/hfm.1009

✦ Synopsis

This book is a part of the series in Human Factors in Transportation that is edited by Barry H. Kantowitz. It is intended to demonstrate the practical and theoretical aspects of human factors for the transportation specialist in need of new ideas about the interface between people and complex systems. The editors, Hancock and Desmond, suggest that in the last decade there are relatively few contributions to the literature with comprehensive coverage for the theorist, researcher, student, and practitioner. The book is broken down into three parts: stress, workload and fatigue. Each of the parts has a section on theory, research, practice and commentary. The sections are remarkably well balanced in terms of coverage. In demonstrating that transportation is a useful domain for testing models of human behavior, this book appears to meet one of the intended goals stated in the series forward by Dr. Kantowitz.

The contribution of this book is less about what it says, and more about the context that it presents about the current state of understanding in the field. It highlights very clearly what we do not know in relation to what we currently believe. The articles contributed by more than 50 individuals are seamlessly presented in this book of nearly 700 pages. The chapters are written by authors with extensive background knowledge and include references to the work of many of the other contributors. The contributors have done a fine job of showing the similarities and differences between stress, fatigue and workload through a great deal of empirical support derived from many different fields. There are references included about past work related to stress and fatigue as far back as the late 1800s. However, Hancock and Desmond suggest that attempts to understand behavior that ignore the dynamic or energetic parts of behavior are doomed to failure. If one subscribes to this point of view, unfortunately, this will force us to discount large portions of the previous literature related to these areas.

Hancock and Desmond note that, at present, the scientific community can not provide an acceptable prediction or approximation of operator response in many complex systems. However, considering the "24-hour" society that has emerged, there is a greater need for predicting operator response in physical and cognitive work. One of the most interesting chapters regarding applications was the chapter by Paul S. Rau from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the scientific issues and technical challenges in implementing drowsy driver detection and warning systems in heavy vehicles.