Distractions Raise Work-Related Errors

While brief interruptions — such as reading an email or colleagues knocking at the door — are common in workplace, these can be cause for errors that may compromise health and safety.  Erik Altmann, from Michigan State University (Michigan, USA), and colleagues asked 300 people to complete a sequence-based procedure on a computer. The team found that interruptions of about three seconds doubled the error rate.   Observing that: “Even momentary interruptions can seem jarring when they occur during a process that takes considerable thought,” the lead investigator comments that: “What this means is that our health and safety is, on some level, contingent on whether the people looking after it have been interrupted.”