VisionAndPsychosis.Net©
In Montgomery Alabama
The Modern Cubicle
Copyright
2003
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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected until the 1960's.
In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.
It caused mental breaks for office workers.
You will find this material hard to believe.
This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.
For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.
The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.
The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.
This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.
The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.
If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.
Long term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga
If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.
The Modern Cubicle
Page Index
History Elements of Design Dissociative Episodes Around the World
Early Office Designs Cubicle Improvements
Links to Cubicle Manufacturers Prevention
Your help solicited, click this line.
I am searching for the original publication of papers on this discovery.
Volunteers searching the APA database, psychology, are unable to find them.
History (This information is on several pages. The link is to the bottom of this page to conserve space here.)
Cubicles became the industry standard for worker protection after an accidental discovery revealed the cause of sudden onset dissociative episodes in at-risk office workers. (Nervous Breakdowns)
The walls and other side or peripheral vision blocking features prevent modern workers having the sudden onset dissociative episodes.
Subliminal Distraction happens when your brain attempts but fails to create the vision startle reflex many times in a compact time frame.
Most people can learn to ignore distracting movement in peripheral vision. When you do that the startle will stop. But you cannot stop seeing anything in your vision field. That means your subliminal sight continues to detect threat movement and react to it.
The subliminal functioning of this normal feature of your physiology of sight prevents your becoming aware anything is happening.
Since the accidental discovery, beginning about fifty years ago, Cubicles have been refined and are now a subset of Systems Furniture.
Britannica cites the library carrel from the fourteenth century. It prevented distraction while reading.
Haworth is credited with the first room divider panels in 1953
The first close-spaced office workstation was introduced by Herman Miller Inc. in 1964. The Action Office 1 was an open room plan workstation. By 1968 Herman Miller Inc. introduced the Action Office System. There is agreement in sites and discussions on-line that Miller added panels to early prototypes. Pictures that claim to be of that original prototype system show framed curtains between desk work areas.
A biography of Robert Propst on the Herman Miller Inc. website states the cubicle was introduced in 1968.
Some sources claim that the reason for the Herman Miller panels was to provide electrical wiring rather than drilling holes in the floor. But a Forbes Magazine article credits a patent for the first cubicle wall panels with electrical wiring to Richard Haworth in 1976.
http://www.forbes.com/2000/09/30/0930people_print.html
If you research Cubicles on-line other sites tell of first efforts sparked by designs from either Germany or France depending on who you want to believe. One article mentions Marcel Propst, a French scientist as the source of theory for close-spaced workstations.
Some sites mention that the walls of a Cubicle prevent distraction caused by the detection of movement in the room. They do not mention the conflict of human physiology and the mental break it can cause.
Today designers appear to believe the phenomenon only produces a temporary harmless period of confusion and psychotic-like behavior.
Why is this information not included in news stories? There are several reasons.
1) TV reporters work against time deadlines and most TV station budgets do not include funds for deep investigations. They rip-and-read on camera from news wire stories. This problem sounds so impossible to believe that I have had reporters hang up on me while attempting to find someone interested in the problem.
2) Reporters writing "feature articles" rather than news articles, include or exclude information based on the slant they choose for their stories. This is an editorial decision. The facts included in these stories will be true but a feature article may not tell the whole story.
Example
The Man Behind The Cubicle - Metropolis Magazine Robert Propst long time designer for Herman Miller Inc. denies he invented the Cubicle.
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1198/no98man.htm
This internal Herman Miller site page mentions the first prototype of the Action Office in 1964.
"1964
Bob Propst and George Nelson work together on the
first prototypes of Action Office 1, a group of freestanding units that will
evolve into the Action Office system".
"1968
Herman Miller introduces the Action Office system, the world's first open-plan
modular system of panels and attaching components. Designed by Robert Propst,
AO, as it will come to be called, will revolutionize office design and spawn a
whole new industry.
Robert Propst's book, The Office: A Facility Based on Change, is
published."
(This was not the only source for this
information but other pages and articles are no longer available on line.)
http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/Timeline/0,,a7-c364-tl7,00.html
(A CNN reprint of a Fortune Magazine mentions the death of Robert Propst in 2000.)
(Repeat: The Herman Miller 'Action Office One' system Propst designed is reported as an open office system.)
Second article on Propst and his Action Office. http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1101/wof/
3) Newspapers, print media, are spaced based media. Editors may remove whole sections of stories to meet space requirements. Elements of a story requiring a detailed difficult explanation would be the first section to be removed.
Print media use a top down reporting style. This is a hold over from Civil War telegraph transmission of news stories. The salient facts are in the first paragraphs. If the 1860's telegraph connection was lost at least the bare essentials got through.
None of the sites and articles linked above tell why the design features of 'Systems Furniture Workstations' (Cubicles) block the peripheral vision of workers. They do not explain why almost all computers work locations face into the corner of the cubicle away from the entrance.
This feature creates the confinement cubicle users feel. Why is it there?
It is there because the act of performing work, such as accounting, text editing, reading for comprehension, or using a computer requires concentration and constant mental investment.
That level of mental investment, concentration, is the mental state necessary to engage the conflict of physiology and Subliminal Distraction exposure
While in this state of concentration, if your 'subliminal sight' detects movement approaching from behind, your brain will attempt to alert you with a Peripheral Vision Reflex. (Link is to the Bottom of this page.)
Remember the last time you were startled? That happened so fast that there was no time for evaluation of the movement. Your brain just instantaneously reacts. That's why it's a reflex.
That Reflex is to break your concentration and force your head to turn toward the movement. If you have been startled or caught something out of the corner of your eye, that was a Peripheral Vision Reflex.
Humans can automatically ignore these reflexes. But we can't stop subliminally seeing the movement that causes them. And we can't tell our brain to stop attempting to force a reflex when that movement is detected. This problem is mentioned in psychology lectures about the physiology of sight, subliminal sight. It is a conflict of our physiology.
The explanation given in those lectures is that a mental conflict is created by ignoring the reflexes and this conflict builds until the mental break happens.
If you have friends or family using computers in unprotected workspace in homes, dorm rooms, student apartments, or small business offices read Prevention (Bottom of this page.)
Some design features have changed over time.
High walls of early Cubicles directed sound up and away from the work floor in addition to blocking peripheral vision of the concentrating worker. When quiet office machines were invented the high walls were not always necessary. Eventually the designers learned to protect the worker not the space. A pair of eyeglasses with opaque triangles placed on the temple arms at the hinge would perform the same side-vision blocking function. Use Safety Glasses as the example. Safety Glasses have triangles on the temple arms to block flying particles hitting the eye. Those triangles will also block side vision to prevent the detection of threat movement.
Several design elements are used to provide levels of protection lower than full Cubicle Level Protection.
Low wall Cubicles depend on the fact that movement of the head and shoulders of workers in adjoining cubicles is not vigorous enough to create a peripheral vision reflex. Workers are oriented so that movement in nearby aisles happens behind the worker.
Differential lighting makes detection of movement in lower light areas, aisles and hallways, more difficult. Bright work lights over the work surface force the pupil of the eye to be smaller. When reflected light from movement in lower light areas enters the workspace it is less likely to be detected.
One elegant design eliminates dividing partition walls entirely. Workers are arranged next to one wall surface and angled so that right hand traffic will approach the exposed side of the workstation head on. Traffic approaching from behind will be further away on the opposite side of the aisle. By the time that traffic approaching from behind hits the worker's Subliminal Peripheral Vision on the exposed side, the traffic is moving away from, not toward the worker.
New designs which are attached to a central moveable pole can be arranged so that all traffic not coming to the worker will be far enough away to escape detection. The traffic which does come to the worker will not be enough to cause a problem. This design eliminates the traffic aisle beside workers.
Choices about how the workplace will be designed are made based on the expected use of the individual workstations.
Homes, dorm rooms, student apartments, and small business offices are not usually designed by professionals. Workers and students are more likely to be victims of the dissociative episode for that reason.
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You can see the old office design called The Bull Pen, any night on episodes of NYPD Blue, Law and Order, or Barney Miller. This plan places the office executive in a private office and the work force at open unprotected desks in a large adjoining room.
Law and Order SVU has two old style metal office desks facing each other in the middle of the room. That is the design problem. The Atlanta Police Department had problems with this phenomenon and switched to cubicles.
Engineering design offices of the 1950's were huge rooms with row after row of drafting tables or desks. Nervous Breakdown's happened until the engineering design discovery and the Bull Pen design disappeared. These events continue to happen today in homes, dorm rooms, student apartments, and small business offices. Engineers do not design these workstations.
Intel and Hewlett Packard were the first two companies to switch to all Cubicles in their facilities.
____________________________________________
This link to Knoll is the latest attempt to modernize the business office.
The Flash Player version on this page is a slow load for dial-up Internet connections. http://a3i.knoll.com/a3i/launch_flash.html
________________________________________
Early Office Designs
This National Archive photo is of early office situations. These were called Bullpen designs. The executive would have been placed in a private office at the rear. That person often had windows to observe workers in the bullpen. Photo Circa 1941.
This Johnson's Wax Company building was Frank Lloyd Wright's solution to the problem of crowded office workspace in 1936.
Note the tapered columns. Wright was required to build a test jig and prove they could carry the design load.
The cross aisles are wide so that there is no one position where many people walk too-close beside a concentrating worker. This was a fortunate accidental design.
The problem of Subliminal Distraction was not discovered until about 1968. The name, SD, may have been used much later.
(National Archive digital display photo.)
(This photo will be cropped later.)
________________________________________
Practicing engineers may know little about the psychiatric injury. When I asked an engineer in Birmingham Alabama I could not find a name for the phenomenon. Designers do know that the workstation of someone engaging deep mental investment to do their job must be constructed so that the worker cannot see movement approaching from behind. I doubt that many of the designers are aware that this involves subliminal sight. Early designs simply arranged the workstation so that everything on either side of the workers head is stationary.
A grad student in Design emailed me for permission to use my site in her thesis. She informed me that the correct term for the phenomenon is Subliminal Distraction.
When I emailed and wrote schools of architecture the replies indicated that this problem is unknown in the general architectural field. When colleges use in house construction departments and do not hire properly trained engineers to design interior workspace the phenomenon of physiology can be engaged.
_____________________________________
For years there has been speculation that the increase in College Suicides is somehow related to the invention and use of the computer. Computers were invented about the time college suicides began to increase. It's not the computer, it's the workstation where the computer is used. When students create study or computer workstations in rooms with repeating, detectable, movement that workstation must have Cubicle Level Protection. High rates of suicide at schools such as NYU and MIT indicate that there are engineering design problems at those schools.
Within the circles of engineers who do use this information the psychiatric injury is believed to be a temporary dissociative episode that only happens to office workers using unprotected workspace. It has not occurred to the engineers that as a conflict of human physiology, the phenomenon will happen anywhere and at anytime the situation in the business office is replicated and maintained for enough time.
Other pages which demonstrate this phenomenon causes mental breaks in many places around the world.
Chaco Canyon page theorizes that there have been previous outbreaks of the problem. For instance: Windigo Psychosis, a belief that you are becoming the cannibal Windigo monster, happened to Native Americans in the northern United States and Canada. Small living spaces in cold winter weather would produce many opportunities for the phenomenon to cause a mental break as craft-work, was attempted while other family members move around the concentrating worker.
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome. Circa. 1880, is an interesting new addition to the Chaco Canyon page. It is compared to Latah, a Culture Bound Syndrome of Malaysia, and Myiachit, a jumping disease of Siberia. All are associated with startle and extreme suggestibility Medical dictionaries cite suggestibility as a reason operant conditioning might be involved. The phenomenon explored on this site is Accidental Operant Conditioning.
Missing Students, College Suicides, and Mysterious Disappearances are my notes on investigations.
The Demonstration page allows you to experience the 'habituation to extinction' of movement in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.
The Mary Shotwell Little Dianne Shields Shields Solution is about the most famous disappearance in Atlanta history.
In China Qi Gong, the slow motion martial arts exercise produces psychotic episodes. Case histories say that victims seem to become addicted to Qi Gong and can't stop gathering others to exercise with them. While concentrating to direct Qi, chee, to balance life force each person can subliminally detect movement of those near them. Gurus in China say that performing the exercise movements wrong causes the psychotic episodes.
For 3000-years the practice of Kundalini Yoga has produced a mental state called the Awakening of Kundalini. The onset of hearing voices and the belief that you can communicate and direct the actions of others through mental telepathy, is thought to be that Awakening. By any standard, the belief that you can levitate and dematerialize is psychotic. Yogis say that failure to control the Awakening causes the psychotic episodes associated with Kundalini Yoga.
In 1961 Aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system visited New Hampshire and abducted Betty and Barney Hill. Barney was a postal worker on the midnight to eight shift. It is unlikely his workspace had Cubicle Level Protection in 1961. This is the seminal story for Alien Abduction. Instead of having the mental break at work and being the first case of 'Going Postal,' Barney had his event under hypnosis. This abduction case started it all. Post Offices do not offer Cubicle Level Protection today. Going Postal is a Culture Bound Syndrome of the United States. (Chaco Canyon and Culture Bound Syndromes pages.)
Cubicle Improvements
Designs have been refined over the years. One modification was to lower the high walls. Another innovation was to use room partitioning wall panels to create protected workspace. This combines room partitioning and workstation into one item.
Systems Furniture Workstations will only fasten together one way. Office furniture manufacturers did this because they could not control how desks and chairs would be arranged after they left the factory. This prevents someone changing the design and destroying Cubicle Level Protection.
The latest innovation is to use overhead power and data cables concealed in poles. The workstation can be moved to change the arrangement or groupings of workstations for special projects. When I asked about Cubicle Level Protection for these designs the sales representative said if I had concerns I should select other designs with solid partition panels. One side of these moveable systems designs is open allowing subliminal sight to detect motion on that side. The design's feasibility depends on there not being high human traffic to any one workstation or that traffic will be far enough away from the worker that there will not be detection. It does not take into account that exposure is cumulative.
If a worker has exposure in a computer or game playing situation in the home, they could get enough total exposure to have a psychotic episode.
One of the new proposals is to replace cubicles with exercise equipment that has a computer attached. No I am not kidding. Dr. James A. Levine, a Mayo Clinic researcher of obesity, has proposed just that. Last year he designed and tested a classroom with no traditional desks. Students sat on exercise balls and used laptop computers.
Mayo Clinic site page. http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/mayo/research/levine_lab/
USA Today story http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-07-office-fit_x.htm?csp=34
Any activity that requires mental investment to the level of slight dissociation will create the "special circumstances" for exposure from visual Subliminal Distraction if there is repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision.
Read Prevention at the bottom of this page.
(New wireless cell phones with games loaded will expose phone owners to subliminal stimulation everywhere they are used. This will probably cause additional psychiatric problems and possibly create an increase in violence in society.)
Summary
Regardless of the year of construction or which manufacturer built the Cubicle, by observation you can verify that the simple first design still determines the features of a modern Cubicle.
There is only one seating position in each single occupant cubicle or Systems Furniture workstation. The design and placement of the interior features, built-in filing cabinets, shelves, drawers, determine that seating position and block peripheral vision without revealing that purpose. Unless you twist, lean back, or roll out of the work position you cannot see human traffic moving in adjoining aisles outside the cubicle.
Cubicles can be assembled only one way. This is to prevent you accidentally creating that design mistake of the 1950's.
Parts from different manufacturers are not interchangeable for the same reason.
Obviously moving extra chairs and temporary desks into that space would defeat the purpose of the protective elements.
The area directly behind the worker is a safe zone. A corner seating position inside the square of a Cubicle provides a large safe area behind the worker. The corner position always faces away from the entry unless an additional panel is provided.
The library carrel was the first vision blocking device. The encyclopedia Britannica dates the first example to the 1400's.
In earlier centuries highboy secretaries and tall office desks placed the worker above human traffic but the primary reason for the design may have been that heat rises.
Designs sold for home offices and intended to be installed an a private room may not have full Cubicle Level Protection.
Jobs that require full mental investment, concentration, need full protection. Using a computer does that. You will notice that in Cubicles all computer installations face into a corner. There are exceptions to this. If the computer is used to supply information for a phone operator, for instance, full protection is not used. If the workstation will only be used for short periods there may be little protection designed into it.
Computers used in Cubicles are placed under the desk. Blinking lights on the CPU can be mistaken for threat movement when detected by Subliminal Peripheral Vision. (As you turn your head toward a blinking light your brain will believe the light is threat movement approaching from behind, relative movement. Peripheral Vision Reflexes are formed below thought reason and consciousness. At that primitive level the input is all neural impulses between neurons. Your brain cannot distinguish between signals caused by reflected light from a moving object and light from a point source, a blinking light.)
(NOTE, Compaq and HP have removed the bright blinking light from their computer CPU cases. The hard drive busy light is still there but it now is very dim and you must actually look into the bezel to see it.)
View Cubicles and Systems Furniture: (some links below are dead - an upcoming edit will clear them up)
The websites of office furniture manufacturers are professionally maintained. Internal pages and their URL's frequently change. It would be impossible for me to maintain competent links to pages within those sites. You can see the design elements by searching the sites. The exception is Office Furniture Systems listed below.
First find 'Products,' then look for the term, 'Systems.'
As you visit these sites remember that some designs provide full Cubicle Level Protection and some do not. Not all workers require this level of protection. An accountant in a busy room would but not a receptionist. A private office with a correctly installed computer provides full protection. The dealer or distributor would determine the needs of an office.
Office Furniture Center
Office Furniture Center is a full service independent company in Hartselle Alabama.
Home page. http://www.ofcproducts.com/index.htm
Samples of Systems Furniture Cubicles. http://www.ofcproducts.com/remanufactured%20systems.htm
http://www.boiseoffice.com/index.shtml This company sells service and uses products. Select 'Furniture Case Studies,' on the left of the home page then click on the Davidson College picture. Examine the placement of large stuffed chairs in the library. There is no protection except diminished lighting for those reading and study chairs. This design does not account for possible cumulative exposure at other campus locations.
http://www.ergogenic.com/default.html This site is a design company which uses the products. There are engineering drawings of floor plans and clusters of workstations. Many of the designs are of situations which do not have full Cubicle Level Protection.
http://www.globalindustries.com/ When I selected South America on Global's map I got Canada.
http://www.haworth.com/index_fhome.asp
http://www.kimballoffice.com/ This site has several case studies. One of the more interesting is of the set design of the HBO TV program 'K Street' Produced by "That's Not Going To Happen Productions," Ferrari North America, XL America, and KUTV CBS 2 News are examples. Smoked glass and opaque stripes on glass walls are used in these case studies. You should note that features of some designs keep traffic in a hallway at a distance to reduce possible detection.
http://www.loudenoffice.com/index.cfm Colorado manufacturer
http://www.steelcase.com/en/index.jsp
http://www.teknion.com/home.asp
Small businesses and home offices are not designed by engineers. The supposition is that in those small rooms there is not enough human traffic to cause a problem even if the traffic pattern is beside a worker's desk. Additionally colleges may or may not hire professional designers. In Alabama a Building and Construction Administration builds college facilities. When I tried to contact them they would not return phone calls. I recently wrote the Governor about this problem.
Herman Miller is using a new system to design what they call SQA Furniture. (Simple Quick Affordable)
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_14/b3675049.htm
I have a few pages of links to engineering standard setting bodies. These regulating bodies and civil engineering text books may be where information on this problem is finally located. It is not possible for me to keep up all the research within the time I have available. The page will be completed in the future.
The links page has been expanded to include my Internet Explorer "Favorites " But most subject links are on the bottom of each page. I have located the saved files from previous Windows crashes. Those links will also be made available. There are duplicates to be resolved and eliminated.
Links Page for the entire site, VPN.
Links for this page
GSA
This PDF file is 167 pages of information but does not mention Cubicle Level Protection.
Lawsuits
Patent infringement
"Haworth and Herman Miller design and produce modular office systems, paneling and furnishings. Haworth holds patents on, among other things, a configuration of power supply modules within pre-fabricated office panels. In its promotional literature, Herman Miller pictured a configuration of panels that, if so assembled, would have infringed Haworth's patent."
Miller sued Travelers Insurance who declined to pay Miller for expenses defending the Halworth suit. This suit reinforces the information that Halworth not Miller holds the patent for wiring within panels.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=6th&navby=case&no=980373p
Links
Cubicles the great mistake
A Fortune Magazine article on CNN has pictures from 1965 that document the progress of cubicle design. Note that CLP is maintained by positioning each worker relative to the others. .
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/09/magazines/fortune/cubicle_howiwork_fortune/index.htm
Prevention:
This section is now
repeated at the bottom of every page.
All
home, apartment, or dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace.
To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If
that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your
peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a
busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are
achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It
is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'
If
you use computer or CD-ROM games for many hours day after day, the game playing
position should follow the same rules as the computer workstation. Battery
operated games will not run long enough on a single rechargeable battery to
cause a risk for SPVP.
Although
a laptop does not have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same
rules apply to your work position. There
should not be human traffic moving to you from behind. There should be nothing
behind you, which could enter your subliminal peripheral vision field as you
turn your head while working at the laptop and be mistaken for threat movement.
Only
movement coming from behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause
a peripheral vision reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead
then enters your Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be
no peripheral vision reflex.
Repeated
for Emphasis:
A
single session or rare sessions will not cause this problem.
It
is the same day after day long hours of play or computer use with detectable
movement in ‘Subliminal Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a
risk for SPVP injury.
Exposure can be cumulative
The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.
Copyright 2003
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##########
Links
ANBHE (American National Business Hall of Fame)
A biography of D J DePree founder of Herman Miller is in the Hall of Fame on this site.. The company was named after his father-in-law who loaned him the money to buy a furniture company. .
http://www.anbhf.org/laureates/djdepree.html
History
Fifty years ago a group of businessmen saw an opportunity to create a new industry by modernizing the business office. They wanted to create close-spaced workstations to replace the open-room unprotected-desk system then in use.
The companies hired designers, engineers, and scientists to build these workstations but when the first examples were installed some of the workers began having bizarre or psychotic episodes.
When the problem was researched it was being caused by Peripheral Vision Reflexes. The solution was to design each workstation so that the side vision of each worker was blocked. The workers could no longer detect movement in the room to create repeating, subliminal, Peripheral Vision Reflexes.
The Cubicle was the industry standard by the 1960's.
Peripheral Vision Reflexes Subliminal Sight Cubicle Level Protection
Humans have vision driven reflexes because they are an evolutionarily developed, retained warning system. Early man and pre-humans, hunter gathers, needed a method to avoid predation of larger animals. These reflexes driven by subliminal sight warn you of movement approaching from behind. To be effective this system must work all the time. As long as your eyes are open this feature of you physiology is there to break your concentration and force you to turn your head toward the movement.
Modern man has learned to ignore movement that is not dangerous to us. The conflict of physiology is that although we can do that we can't stop seeing objects in conscious sight or movement in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.
In addition, these reflexes are created at such a primitive level in the brain that there is no reason or memory involved. If the input to the brain meets criterion the reflex instantly happens. Think of the last time you were startled. That happened so fast there could not have been thought involved. That's why it's a reflex.
Bottom line, our physiology of sight was not developed to fit into the modern business office. We evolved and adapted to a primitive hunter gather society.
The Cubicle and Cubicle Level Protection allow us to work in the modern environment.
Volunteers attempting to research this problem in the APA database encountered a problem because there are so many papers on the human vision startle reflex. Limited understanding of the phenomenon prevented devising distracters that would eliminate unrelated papers.
Suggested distracters are:
Herman Miller- The name of the company that probably hired psychologists to solve the problem.
Subliminal Sight - The feature of human physiology that was given as the cause of the mental breaks in psychology lectures.
Peripheral Vision Reflex- The primary field in which the papers would fall.
Date- 1964 when the Herman Miller Inc introduced the Action Office One to 1968+ when the invention of the Cubicle is claimed.
This discovery must have been included in journals in design and engineering because of the way I encountered it in the 1960's.
New material on Mad Travelers of France, 1800's, and an incident on the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898/99 strengthen the connection to this phenomenon being a major stressor for mental illness.