The effects of personnel replacement on an information-processing crew

Abstract

Which is right: the theory that the human element in a man-machine system is "interchangeable," implying that personnel turnover is irrelevant to the working of the system; or the theory of "crew integrity," implying that performance is hurt by personnel turnover? "The questions posed were specific to information-processing systems and training… . The seven-man information-processing system used in this study was a simple analog of the surveillance and identification sections of the manual aircraft control and warning system (ACW)." Many "crews" were used. They were divided into crews with and without turnover. The indication of performance "was the ratio of the number of task units processed to the number requiring processing." Turnover had bad effects and no training methods tried changed this outcome. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3LH91R. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)