ABSTRACT
Is the control-display relationship in the vertical plane more important today than previously recognised? The relationship between a control movement and its effect that is expected by most of the population is
known as a ‘population stereotype’ (Fitts 1951). Control-display relationships that conform to a stereotype are said to be ‘compatible’ (Fitts and Seegar 1953). Designers are apt to argue that even where stereotypes are clearly reflected in behaviour, they are of little practical importance, since the operator will quickly adapt himself to the unexpected relationship and that intensive training can reverse the effects of learning. Harlow (1951) showed that given sufficient training animals can learn to switch between conflicting patterns of response. Simon (1954), however, used a secondary task as a distracting condition and found that both mild and severe degrees of stress resulted in significantly more reversal errors being made by the subjects performing on the originally non-dominant arrangement than by those performing on the originally dominant arrangement, although both groups had apparently practised to equal performance.
