The Effects of Error Notification Timing on Error Corretion in Routine Data Entry

Experienced data entry operators participated in an experiment to evaluatethe effects of the error notification timing on error correction performance irtthe data entry task. Three timing strategies were studied: immediate errornotification, notification at the end of a field, and notification at the end of aphysical line. Based on a model of data entry and a model of the correctionprocess hypotheses were developed to predict operator performance. It wasconjectured that operators treat individual fields as separate units tasks andthat interrupting within a task would be more disruptive than interruptingbetween tasks. The results of the study indicated that the error rates duringcorrection were smaller for the end of line treatment although the time tocomplete the correction was longer for this treatment than the other two.Performance was essentially the same for those operators interrupted whowere interrupted immediately and those who were interrupted at the end ofa field