An error tolerant memory aid for reduced cognitive load in number copying tasks

Number copying tasks are still common despite increased digitalization of services. Number copying tasks are cognitively and visually demanding, errors are easily introduced and the process is often perceived as laborious. This study proposes an alternative scheme based on dictionary coding that reduces the cognitive load on the user by a factor of five. The strategy has several levels of error detection and error correction characteristics and is easy to implemen

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 352)

This bibliography lists 147 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during July 1991. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

The role of metaphor in user interface design

The thesis discusses the question of how unfamiliar computing systems, particularly those with graphical user interfaces, are learned and used. In particular, the approach of basing the design and behaviour of on-screen objects in the system's model world on a coherent theme and employing a metaphor is explored. The drawbacks, as well as the advantages, of this approach are reviewed and presented. The use of metaphors is also contrasted with other forms of users' mental models of interactive systems, and the need to provide a system image from which useful mental models can be developed is presented. Metaphors are placed in the context of users' understanding of interactive systems and novel application is made of the Qualitative Process Theory (QPT) qualitative reasoning model to reason about the behaviour of on-screen objects, the underlying system functionality, and the relationship between the two. This analysis supports reevaluation of the domains between which user interface metaphors are said to form mappings. A novel user interface design, entitled Medusa, that adopts guidelines for the design of metaphor-based systems, and for helping the user develop successful mental models, based on the QPT analysis and an empirical study of a popular metaphor-based system, is described. The first Medusa design is critiqued using well-founded usability inspection method. Employing the Lakoff/Johnson theory, a revised version of the Medusa user interface is described that derives its application semantics and dialogue structures from the entailments of the knowledge structures that ground understanding of the interface metaphor and that capture notions of embodiment in interaction with computing devices that QPT descriptions cannot. Design guidelines from influential existing work, and new methods of reasoning about metaphor-based designs, are presented with a number of novel graphical user interface designs intended to overcome the failings of existing systems and design approaches

NASA space station automation: AI-based technology review

Research and Development projects in automation for the Space Station are discussed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automation technologies are planned to enhance crew safety through reduced need for EVA, increase crew productivity through the reduction of routine operations, increase space station autonomy, and augment space station capability through the use of teleoperation and robotics. AI technology will also be developed for the servicing of satellites at the Space Station, system monitoring and diagnosis, space manufacturing, and the assembly of large space structures

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 320)

This bibliography lists 125 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during January, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

INVESTIGATING SUCCESS BIASED TRANSMISSION, AND LONG-TERM MEMORY CAPABILITIES, IN CHIMPANZEES AND CHILDREN: IMPLICATIONS FOR CUMULATIVE CULTURE.

Cumulative culture denotes the arguably human capacity to build on the developments of our predecessors. Factors such as imitation, teaching and cultural transmission biases have been identified as important for cumulative culture. In this thesis factors with implications for cumulative culture were investigated in chimpanzees and 4-to 5-year old children. Two experiments were designed to assess success biased copying in chimpanzees (and children) and a third study investigated chimpanzees’ retention and transfer of complex tool use skills. Information pertaining to success derived from others’ performances influenced both chimpanzees and children’s subsequent actions during a video based foraging task and token exchange task. Specifically, some of the first evidence for public information use and payoff biased transmission was documented in both species and thus suggests that a lack of such assessment abilities does not underlie the lack of cumulative culture in chimpanzees. In the final empirical study, some of the first evidence for appreciable long-term memory and improvements in the utility of complex tool manufacture was documented in chimpanzees. High fidelity retention of (socially) learned information is important for cumulative culture, where behaviour must be retained with sufficient fidelity for it to be reproduced. This is especially so where, for example, tool use is required to access temporally rare resources (e.g. nuts falling certain months of the year/seasonal resources)

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 203

This bibliography lists 150 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in January 1980

Person-Level Sources of Continued Influence Effect: The Roles of Attention Control, Intolerance of Ambiguity and Conservatism

People continually rely on disinformation to make judgments after it is corrected or discredited. This phenomenon is termed the continued influence effect (CIE). Using a sample of 152 participants, the current study examined whether the CIE can be explained by a person’s political orientation, attention control (AC) levels, intolerance of ambiguity (IA) and need for specific closure (NSC). It was found that when political orientation was based on self-reports, the overall political conservatism did not predict the CIE (r = .13, p = .09) but economic conservatism did (r = .19, p \u3c .05), suggesting that those with higher self-reported fiscally conservative attitudes may show more prolonged influence of disinformation. In addition, the overall AC levels did not predict the CIE (r = .08, p = .30), but the antisaccade scores reflecting the ability to inhibit automatic responses were a significant positive predictor of the CIE (r = .18, p \u3c .05). Lastly, neither IA nor NSC significantly predicted the CIE (ps \u3e .05). These findings were obtained with only one of two measures of the CIE employed, the warehouse fire paradigm (Johnson & Seifert, 1994). Limitations of both the CIE and political orientation measures are discussed. One important implication of this work is that previous research may have depicted an incomplete picture of political orientation, and future studies should aim to capture various aspects of political orientation to further examine the association between various facets of conservatism and the CIE. In addition, more experimental studies should be adopted to better uncover the causal links proposed in this study. These findings may facilitate further exploration and understanding of the sources of the CIE. Keywords: continued influence effect; disinformation; conservatism; attention control; intolerance of ambiguity; need for specific closur

Teaching and learning writing at primary school: an exploration of writing environments, transcription and text generation

Introduction: Children’s writing skill continues to cause concern. While research into interventions is on-going, little is known about writing in natural classroom environments or the effects of individual differences on everyday performance. This project examined real-life handwritten work in primary school, focussing on transcription and its relationship with text-generation in different classroom writing environments (i.e. whether content is teacherdetermined, child-determined, or generated jointly by teachers and children). Method: Nine Year 5 teachers were interviewed about their classroom practice, training, and beliefs relating to writing tuition. All handwritten work by 135 children from one week was photographed and transcribed. Amount written and spelling accuracy were compared between children, classes and writing environments. Relationships between transcription and word-level text generation were examined. Compositional quality of child-generated writing was scored and factors drawn from the entire project evaluated as predictors of quality. Results: The teachers felt that handwriting tuition should occur throughout primary school. Though compositional quality was considered to be more associated with handwriting speed rather than its neatness, teachers emphasised neatness. The most productive child wrote 16 times more than the least. Lower-productivity classes were typified by a greater proportion of teachergenerated writing. Compositional quality and lexical richness of childgenerated writing were positively associated with amount of teacher + childgenerated writing, but the link with amount of teacher-generated writing was non-significant. Spelling-errors in copying tended to be phonologically implausible whereas in child-generated writing plausible errors were more frequent. Better genre-writing scores were achieved by children who had written more word-types during preparation for the tasks. Strongest predictors of scores were teachers feeling well-prepared for writing tuition and more recent qualification, and larger amounts of teacher + childgenerated writing carried out. Discussion: The national curriculum for handwriting does not require tuition throughout primary school, contrary to motor learning research. More recently qualified teachers were less critical of writing performance being judged against specified criteria than those qualified for longer. Many teachers were unaware of how much copying occurred and copying may be an ineffective means of acquiring vocabulary knowledge; increasing the amount of teacher + child-generated writing may be beneficial. Other theoretical and practical implications are discussed and limitations and future research considered