Quantitative effects of overlay clutter and information access effort: Examining the scan-clutter trade-off in displays with geospatial maps.

Overlaying images from multiple geospatial databases increases clutter and imposes attentional costs by disrupting focusing attention on each database and dividing attention when comparing databases. Costs of overlay clutter may offset the benefits of reduced scanning between two images displayed separately. In two experiments, we examine these attention issues using computational metrics to quantify clutter.

Beyond the Wizard of Oz: Negative Effects of Imperfect Machine Learning to Examine the Impact of Reliability of Augmented Reality Cues on Visual Search Performance.

Despite knowing exactly what an object looks like, searching for it in a person's visual field is a time-consuming and error-prone experience. In Augmented Reality systems, new algorithms are proposed to speed up search time and reduce human errors. However, these algorithms might not always provide 100% accurate visual cues, which might affect users' perceived reliability of the algorithm and, thus, search performance.

Supporting detection of hostile intentions: automated assistance in a dynamic decision-making context.

In a dynamic decision-making task simulating basic ship movements, participants attempted, through a series of actions, to elicit and identify which one of six other ships was exhibiting either of two hostile behaviors. A high-performing, although imperfect, automated attention aid was introduced. It visually highlighted the ship categorized by an algorithm as the most likely to be hostile.

Information Access Effort: The Role of Head Movements for Information Presented at Increasing Eccentricity on Flat Panel and Head-Mounted Displays.

Objective: This experiment examined performance costs when processing two sources of information positioned at increasing distances using a flat panel display and an augmented reality head-mounted display (AR-HMD).

Background: The AR-HMD enables positioning virtual information at various distances in space. However, the proximity compatibility principle suggests that closer separation when two sources of information require mental integration assists performance, whereas increased separation between two sources hurts integration performance more than when a single source requires focused attention.

How history trails and set size influence detection of hostile intentions.

Previous research suggests people struggle to detect a series of movements that might imply hostile intentions of a vessel, yet this ability is crucial in many real world Naval scenarios. To investigate possible mechanisms for improving performance, participants engaged in a simple, simulated ship movement task. One of two hostile behaviors were present in one of the vessels: Shadowing-mirroring the participant's vessel's movements; and Hunting-closing in on the participant's vessel.

Rendezvous Under Temporal Uncertainty.

Objective: Three experiments sought to understand performance limitations in controlling a ship attempting to meet another moving ship that approached from various trajectories. The influence of uncertainty, resulting from occasional unpredictable delays in one's own movement, was examined.

Background: Cognitive elements of rendezvous have been little studied.

Dynamic ensemble visualizations to support understanding for uncertain trajectories.

When making decisions about uncertain spatial trajectories, such as storm forecasts, people rely on visualizations to support their understanding. Four experiments explored novel visualizations-dynamic ensembles. Nonexperts used visualizations to interpret probabilistic information about potential paths of a hurricane.

Nautical Collision Avoidance : The Cognitive Challenges of Balancing Safety, Efficiency, and Procedures.

Objective: Experimentally investigate maneuver decision preferences in navigating ships to avoid a collision. How is safety (collision avoidance) balanced against efficiency (deviation from path and delay) and rules of the road under conditions of both trajectory certainty and uncertainty.

Background: Human decision error is a prominent factor in nautical collisions, but the multiple factors of geometry of collisions and role of uncertainty have been little studied in empirical human factors literature.

Anchoring and Adjustment in Uncertain Spatial Trajectory Prediction.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the impact of prior information on spatial prediction and understanding of variability.

Background: In uncertain spatial prediction tasks, such as hurricane forecasting or planning search-and-rescue operations, decision makers must consider the most likely case and the distribution of possible outcomes. Base performance on these tasks is varied (and in the case of understanding the distribution, often poor).

Time Sharing Between Robotics and Process Control: Validating a Model of Attention Switching.

Objective: The aim of this study was to validate the strategic task overload management (STOM) model that predicts task switching when concurrence is impossible.

Background: The STOM model predicts that in overload, tasks will be switched to, to the extent that they are attractive on task attributes of high priority, interest, and salience and low difficulty. But more-difficult tasks are less likely to be switched away from once they are being performed.

Complacency and Automation Bias in the Use of Imperfect Automation.

Objective: We examine the effects of two different kinds of decision-aiding automation errors on human-automation interaction (HAI), occurring at the first failure following repeated exposure to correctly functioning automation. The two errors are incorrect advice, triggering the automation bias, and missing advice, reflecting complacency.

Background: Contrasts between analogous automation errors in alerting systems, rather than decision aiding, have revealed that alerting false alarms are more problematic to HAI than alerting misses are.

Part-task training in the context of automation: current and future directions.

Automation often elicits a divide-and-conquer outlook. By definition, automation has been suggested to assume control over a part or whole task that was previously performed by a human (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). When such notions of automation are taken as grounds for training, they readily invoke a part-task training (PTT) approach.

Evidence of automatic processing in sequence learning using process-dissociation.

This paper proposes a way to apply process-dissociation to sequence learning in addition and extension to the approach used by Destrebecqz and Cleeremans (2001). Participants were trained on two sequences separated from each other by a short break. Following training, participants self-reported their knowledge of the sequences.

Representing serial action and perception.

This article presents a review on the representational base of sequence learning in the serial reaction time task. The first part of the article addresses the major questions and challenges that underlie the debate on implicit and explicit learning. In the second part, the informational content that underlies sequence representations is reviewed.

Encoding and representation of simultaneous and sequential arrays in visuospatial working memory.

The effect of presentation type on organization in visuospatial working memory (VSWM) was examined. Stimuli were presented sequentially or simultaneously at study, and participants made same/different judgements at test. The test array varied in four different spatial configuration conditions: one featuring no changes from study, one in which two items switched, one in which the same array repeated but in a different location, and one in which a completely novel test stimulus appeared.

Implicit motor sequence learning is not represented purely in response locations.

This study employed a novel variant of the serial reaction time task, focused on sequencing one element of movement-direction. During the task a repeated pattern of alternating directions (right-left-right, etc.) was embedded in the stimuli, and there was no series of response locations.

Incidental learning of abstract rules for non-dominant word orders.

One way in which adult second language learners may acquire a word order that differs from their native language word order is through exposure-based incidental learning, but little is known about that process and what constrains it. The current studies examine whether a non-dominant word order can be learned incidentally, and if so, whether the rule can be generalized to new words not previously seen in the non-dominant order. Two studies examined the incidental learning of rules underlying the order of nouns and verbs in three-word strings.

Physical activity moderates time-of-day differences in older adults' working memory performance.

Based on a synthesis of the literature on time of day and physical fitness effects on cognition, the current study examined whether physical activity moderated time-of-day differences in older adults' performance on a working memory task. Sedentary older adults' working memory performance declined significantly from morning to evening, whereas more active older adults performed similarly across the day. This interaction did not extend to performance on a simple reaction time task.

Stimulus-specific sequence representation in serial reaction time tasks.

Some recent evidence has favoured purely response-based implicit representation of sequences in serial reaction time tasks. Three experiments were conducted using serial reaction time tasks featuring four spatial stimuli mapped in categories to two responses. Deviant items from the expected sequence that required the expected response resulted in increased response latencies.

Interruption management: the use of attention-directing tactile cues.

Previous research has suggested that providing informative cues about interrupting stimuli aids management of multiple tasks. However, auditory and visual cues can be ineffective in certain situations. The objective of the present study was to explore whether attention-directing tactile cues aid or interfere with performance.

Stimulus and response chunking in the Hebb Digits task.

Using the Hebb Digits task, an incidental sequential learning paradigm, the effects of chunking of both the presentation and response phases of performance were examined. In the first experiment, consistent stimulus chunking increased learning, and performance was at an equivalent level to this when consistent chunking of both stimuli and responses was present. Consistent chunking of the responses alone did not significantly improve learning over a baseline condition where neither stimuli nor responses were chunked.

Effector dependent sequence learning in the serial RT task.

At least five earlier studies could not find effector-dependent learning in the keying version of the serial reaction time (RT) task. Experiment 1 examined whether effector-dependent learning occurs when participants practice the serial RT task with three fingers of one hand for about 1,300 sequence repetitions instead of the more common 50-100 repetitions. The results confirm that, following extended practice, sequence learning produces an effector-dependent component.