Ergonomics Must Take Cognitive Capacity Seriously

Decades of research demonstrate that vigilance deteriorates rapidly and reliably and is often resistant to motivational override, yet ergonomic practice continues to assign monitoring tasks on assumptions the evidence does not consistently support. This paper argues that attentional capacity may be genuinely bound by biological architecture rather than merely variable in response to conditions. Drawing on empirical research and occupational vigilance data, we argue for what might be understood as a recovery of the foundational human factors philosophy of accommodation, calling for ergonomic design to redistribute cognitive work across human and machine capabilities in ways that respect the real limits of human attention.