Originally Posted by
Leightman 957
ekw...Are there not studies showing it is also more difficult to maintain the same degree of vigilance and attentiveness when overseeing an automated system compared to constant manual control, difficulty being a slightly different metric than outside stresses?
Indeed there are - from more than a century ago in 1908 two psychologists Yerkes and Dodson developed a 'law' called after them but often refereed to as the inverted U.
If someone is idle with almost no stress, their attention level drops to its lowest level, if someone is extremely busy with high stress the attention level drops - sometimes called attentional or cognitive tunneling (tunnel vision). The ideal is a medium level stress that keeps the mind stimulated but not over worked.
See
Yerkes?Dodson law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and numerous other references.