Effects of Display Gain on Human Operator Information Processing Rate in a Rate Control Tracking Task

A single-axis rate control tracking experiment was conducted to determine the sensitivity of transinformation (information processing rate in bits/s) to display gain, display type (pursuit or compensatory), and forcing function bandwidth. Four other performance measures were also derived: relative error, relative noiseless error, relative remnant, and system open-loop crossover frequency. It was shown that human information processing rates increased to a maximum and then decreased as a function of both display gain and forcing function bandwidth. In general, little difference in transinformation performance was noted between pursuit and compensatory displays.