Automaticity and Mindfulness in Construction

Mindfulness is critical in enhancing workers’ safety and productivity by improving attention regulation. Attention is a key factor in task performance, influencing the balance between safety and efficiency in repetitive work environments. One factor that significantly impacts attention is skill automaticity, which is associated with reduced attentional requirements following repetition or practice. Despite the known relationship between mindfulness and attention, the interaction between mindfulness dimensions and automaticity remains unknown. This study addresses this gap by investigating how mindfulness influences attention during the transition from novice to expert in a repetitive construction task, providing insights into the interplay between mindfulness, attention, and automaticity. To achieve its objective, we conducted a longitudinal study of the development of automaticity during a roofing task of repetitively installing shingles, where 28 participants were recruited and trained for 22 sessions until they gained automaticity with 616 installations. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), a 39-item 5-point Likert scale, was used to ascertain the mindfulness properties of the participants. The findings revealed significant correlations between non-reactivity to inner experiences and safety-focused attention metrics in the automatic state (p-value < 0.05). These findings suggest that mindfulness traits may support safe and efficient automaticity, highlighting the potential of mindfulness training in enhancing safety and performance in repetitive work environments.