TIME IN ERGONOMICS RESEARCH

The mastering of dynamic situations by human operators is a recurring theme in ergonomics. In order to paint an up-date picture of research a heuristic approach has been adopted by taking an interest in temporal errors and in ergonomical solutions. A temporal error in a dynamic situation is taken to mean an undesired adjustment of the evolution of this situation-whether or not this adjustment is the object of temporal reasoning. The errors have to do with order relationships, durations and temporal perspectives and they have been looked at from four different angles: (1) as shifts in relation to a norm, (2) as stemming from characteristics of the situation, (3) as resulting from an inadequacy or from a conflict of temporal reference systems, and (4) as the products of an inferential reasoning. Each time, the ergonomical implications of these options will be discussed.