Fatigue caused by visual display terminal work: an experimental investigation

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Human Factors Engineering
• Psychology

Background:

• Visual Display Terminal (VDT) work is prevalent, raising concerns about operator fatigue.
• Understanding the interplay between work content and rest strategies is crucial for optimizing VDT work environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of different VDT work content (interesting sentences vs. meaningless numbers) and rest types (dynamic vs. static) on fatigue.
• To evaluate the impact of these conditions on subjective symptoms, visual performance, and cognitive load.

Main Methods:

• Four experimental conditions combining work content and rest types were implemented.
• Participants engaged in 50-minute VDT work sessions followed by 15-minute rests.
• Measurements included flicker test, kinetic vision, subjective symptom surveys, and digit addition tests.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were observed in subjective symptoms, cognitive load (digit addition), or flicker test values between sentence input and number input conditions.
• Kinetic vision showed a slightly smaller decrease in the sentence input group compared to the number input group.
• Dynamic and static rest conditions yielded no significant differences in overall performance or fatigue indicators.

Conclusions:

• The type of VDT work content (meaningful vs. meaningless input) and the nature of rest (dynamic vs. static) do not appear to significantly influence fatigue levels or performance.
• Further research may explore other factors contributing to VDT-related fatigue.