Cognitive Models in Cybersecurity: Learning From Expert Analysts and Predicting Attacker Behavior.

Cybersecurity stands to benefit greatly from models able to generate predictions of attacker and defender behavior. On the defender side, there is promising research suggesting that Symbolic Deep Learning (SDL) may be employed to automatically construct cognitive models of expert behavior based on small samples of expert decisions. Such models could then be employed to provide decision support for non-expert users in the form of explainable expert-based suggestions.

Cyber Teaming and Role Specialization in a Cyber Security Defense Competition.

A critical requirement for developing a cyber capable workforce is to understand how to challenge, assess, and rapidly develop human cyber skill-sets in realistic cyber operational environments. Fortunately, cyber team competitions make use of simulated operational environments with scoring criteria of task performance that objectively define overall team effectiveness, thus providing the means and context for observation and analysis of cyber teaming. Such competitions allow researchers to address the key determinants that make a cyber defense team more or less effective in responding to and mitigating cyber attacks.

Which Aspects of Social Support Are Associated With Which Cognitive Abilities for Which People?

Objectives: To assess the relations between 11 aspects of social support and five cognitive abilities (vocabulary, reasoning, spatial visualization, memory, and speed of processing) and to determine whether these relations between social support and cognition are moderated by age or sex.

Method: A sample of 2,613 individuals between the ages of 18 and 99 years completed a battery of cognitive tests and a questionnaire assessing aspects of social support. A measure of general intelligence was computed using principal components analysis.

Out of sight, out of mind? Relations between visual acuity and cognition.

Prior research has established significant relations between measures of sensory ability and cognitive function in adults of different ages, and several explanations for this relation have been proposed. One explanation is that sensory abilities restrict cognitive processing, a second is that cognitive abilities influence assessments of sensory ability, and a third is that both sensory function and cognition are affected by a common, potentially age-based, third factor. These explanations were investigated using mediation and moderation analyses, with near visual acuity as the sensory measure and scores on visual speed tests and auditory memory tests as the cognitive measures.