Application of Automaticity Theory in Construction

Automaticity, an essential skill attribute, develops when an activity is performed without requiring attention. Despite its importance, little is known about the implications of automaticity in the construction industry. To address this gap, this study investigated the development of automaticity during a repetitive construction task. Recruiting 28 subjects to participate in a laboratory roofing-installation experiment repeated across four trial days, this study examined traditional metrics of the primary (installation) task's duration and accuracy as well as nontraditional metrics of a concurrent secondary (memory) task's score to examine performance measures diagnostically indicative of automaticity. The results revealed that there were significant improvements in the primary task's mean duration and accuracy and the secondary task's mean performance score from the experiment's first trial day to every other day, an indication that, with repeated practice, automaticity-induced performance improves. Because these automatic performance measures provide an index for evaluating feature-based improvements indicative of automaticity, this study argues that such performance measures capture automaticity developing during repetitive construction activities. Given that practitioners are interested in training workers to achieve automaticity to increase their productivity and multitasking skills, the results of this study provide methods for testing training effectiveness and the extent to which workers have developed automaticity.