ABSTRACT
Academic researchers may wish to categorize errors in order to understand behavior and to develop a model of the mechanism or mechanisms involved. Error without undesirable consequences may be considered by most people as merely an irrelevant nuisance. Most schemes include a list of types of error at the first level. For example, it is common to find lists such as errors of omission, commission, intrusion, repetition, substitution, sequencing, etc. The chapter deals with the need to describe errors in terms of actions and interactions. This level of description, a “phenomenological taxonomy,” involves categories such as errors of commission or omission, and could refer to the design and operation of equipment—controls, displays, etc. Applied research into error is almost always in context of accidents. A further important point is that the scheme explicitly points both to the actor as the source of endogenous error, and to the environment in its broadest sense as a source of exogenous error.
