2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
DISCUSSION
These findings indicate that marksmanship, which in this case required intense, but
short-term focus (i.e., 6 s or less), can be competently managed under significant
levels of physiological strain. While fatigue delayed the detection of a target, it did
not adversely affect its engagement, as if the individual became sufficiently aroused
and invariant to their state of physiological strain after they had detected a target. This
suggests that it would be naïve to simply extrapolate the negative effects of stressors
on psychomotor performance, as reported by others, to marksmanship. The impact (or
lack of) of various stressors on psychomotor performance, in general, should be
considered task-specific.
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