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Monotonous tasks create increased risk of accidents - 04-05-2008 |
If you find your job boring you are more likely to make a mistake and more likely to have an accident.
That is the findings of research presented by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Put simply no matter how diligent you think you are, if your job is boring you switch to auto pilot, whether you like it or not.
The researchers found that not only are you more likely to make a mistake, but it is also possible to predict when you are likely to make that error by examining patterns in our brain activity.
Dr Tom Eichele and his colleagues asked participants to repeatedly perform a 'flanker task' - that involves participants responding to visual clues. As they did so, brain scans were performed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They found the participants' mistakes were 'foreshadowed' by a telltale pattern of brain activity.
Distinct changes in brain activity are detectable up to 30 seconds before a mistake happens.
The brain starts to economise, by investing ways in which less effort can be used to complete the same task.
Since this process starts approximately 30 seconds before the mistake is going to be made the researchers believe that it may be possible to build an early-warning system that alerts workers to the task and encourages them to be more alert.
But say the researchers it could take 10 to 15 years to develop a prototype, and before the development process could start the activity within the brain needs to be much more clearly understood.
Perhaps it may be better to give people more interesting or more varied jobs and leave the monotonous tasks to machines.
| National Academy of Science of the USA
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