The Effect of the Precision of Informational Feedback on Human Tracking Performance

Research was conducted to determine human operator abilities in a compensatory tracking task as a function of the precision of the displayed error information for various levels of task difficulty and practice. The controller dynamics were not varied and were such that displacements of the control were integrated twice before affecting the tracking error. Tracking error and the extent of control motion were the criterion measures. The results suggest that (a) increases in the precision of displayed error information result in a negatively accelerated reduction in the tracking error; (b) as the operator becomes more proficient, the relative superiority of an increased precision of displayed error is reduced; (c) the effects of the precision of information on control motion depends upon the difficulty of the task; and (d) the amount of control motion generally decreases as the operator becomes more proficient and the magnitude of this decrease is greater for an “easy” task than for a “difficult” task.