Automatic Information Processes in Document Reading. a Study of Information Handling in Two Intensive Care Units

A study was made of information handling in intensive care units in two hospitals. In one of· the units the information about the patients was read from paper documents whereas in the other unit the same kind of information was read from computer screens. In both units cooperative work was beeing done with documents or forms containing data regarding seriously ill patients. The results show that in the paperbased environment there is a reason to believe that a number of information activities can be automatized in human cognition sense. In the computerized environment however, these same activities seem· to require conscious attention thus leading to high attentional demand. Introduction Some models of human cognitive processing distinguishes between controlled processing and automatic processing. Controlled processing is conscious, serial, slow, laborious and of limited capacity. Automatic processing is close to sensomotoric level, parallel, does not need conscious attention and have seemingly unlimited capacity. A close cooperation between automatically controlled processes and consciously controlled processes seem to be at hand. (Shiffrin & Schneider 1977). Schneider & Schiffrin 1977, shows that under certain conditions visual search tasks can be trained to automaticity. In these experiments subjects were trained to automatic detection of alphanumeric characters called targets, which was presented together with other alphanumeric characters called distractors. The process of automatic detection of the targets was possible to be performed simultaneously with a second task without any need for more conscious capacity than if the second task was carried out by itself. Thus when a task has become automatic it is possible to add it without any additional need for conscious capacity. Other experiments has shown automatic detection when targets and distractors differs in features like colour (Schneider & Eberts 1980), size; category or spatial position (Schneider & Shiffrin 1977). Also search