Psychological and physiological reactions associated with repetitive tasks

The first part is a summarized report on experiments on repetitive serial reaction tasks. If the cognitive load of the repetitive task is low, a decrease of CFF and of the subjective activation level as well as an increase of the heart period variability can be observed. These symptoms of boredom are limited and changed if the repetitive tasks are associated with moderate or high cognitive loads. The second part is a summary of a survey on accounting machine operators. The results show an increasing incidence of localized fatigue symptoms with increasing ulnar deviation, or with greater angles in the elbows or the neck. It is evident that repetitive tasks are often associated with constrained body postures leading to localized fatigue symptoms. Language: en