Functional failures, time and control

This work describes a study of functional failures in a simple process control task called FLOOD. A total of 48 persons have participated in the study. Two research questions have been examined; 1, if it is possible to learn to control a system having periodical functional failures and its relation to the duration of the failures, and 2, if it is possible to trace any changes in control strategy during the experiment. Hypothesis 1 was supported, while hypothesis 2 was not. It was also found that the correlation between the numbers of control actions (commands) was negatively related to performance.