Psychology of communications

A theory is proposed relating to the structuring of mental models and this theory used to account for a number of human error mechanisms. Communications amongst operators and the systems around them is seen as a vital factor in the area of human error and a technique, communications analysis, is proposed as one approach to systematically predicting the ways in which actual system state and the operators' perceptions of that state can get out of step and lead to catastrophe. To be most effective it is expected that the analyst would apply communications analyst with an interactive computer system. Of particular importance is the ability to trace the operator-system communication scenarios in various abnormal system configurations. (orig.)