The role of presentation format on decision-makers' behaviour in accounting

The recent increase in researching presentation format area is resulting in an increase in awareness of the importance of presentation format on decision-makers' behaviour. This paper presents a synthesis of prior research on presentation format in the accounting literature which could be used as bases and references for future research. It reviews and evaluates existing accounting literature that examines the linkages of presentation format on decision-makers behaviour. Finally, future research opportunities in this area are made

What is an affordance and can it help us understand the use of ICT in education?

This paper revisits the concept of affordance and explores its contribution to an understanding of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. It looks at Gibson‟s original idea of affordance and at some of the difficulties long associated with the use of the word. It goes on to describe the translation of the concept of affordance into the field of design through the work, in particular, of Norman. The concept has since been translated into research concerning ICT and further opportunities and difficulties emerge. The paper locates key points of divergence within the usage of „affordance‟, as involving direct perception, invariant properties and complementarity. It concludes by arguing that affordance offers a distinctive perspective on the use of ICT in education because of its focus on possibilities for action

Design Spaces in Visual Analytics Based on Goals: Analytical Behaviour, Exploratory Investigation, Information Design & Perceptual Tasks

This paper considers a number of perspectives on design spaces in visual analytics and proposes a new set of four design spaces, based on user goals. Three of the user goals are derived from the literature and are categorised under the terms exploratory investigation, perceptual tasks, and information design. The fourth goal is categorised as analytical behaviour; a recently defined term referring to the study of decision-making facilitated by visual analytics. This paper contributes to the literature on decision-making in visual analytics with a survey of real-world applications within the analytical behaviour design space and by providing a new perspective on design spaces. Central to our analysis is the introduction of decision concepts and theories from economics into a visual analytics context. Given the recent interest in decision-making we wanted to understand the emerging topic of analytical behaviour as a design space and found it necessary to look at more than just decision-making to make a valuable contribution. The result is an initial framework suitable for use in the analysis or design of analytical behaviour applications

Consciosusness in Cognitive Architectures. A Principled Analysis of RCS, Soar and ACT-R

This report analyses the aplicability of the principles of consciousness developed in the ASys project to three of the most relevant cognitive architectures. This is done in relation to their aplicability to build integrated control systems and studying their support for general mechanisms of real-time consciousness.\ud To analyse these architectures the ASys Framework is employed. This is a conceptual framework based on an extension for cognitive autonomous systems of the General Systems Theory (GST).\ud A general qualitative evaluation criteria for cognitive architectures is established based upon: a) requirements for a cognitive architecture, b) the theoretical framework based on the GST and c) core design principles for integrated cognitive conscious control systems

Cognition in Aristotle's Poetics

This paper examines Aristotle’s understanding of the contributions of perceptual and rational cognition to the composition and reception of poetry. An initial outline of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology shows that Aristotelian perception is sufficiently powerful to sustain very rich, complex patterns of behaviour in human as well as non-human animals, and examines the interaction between perception (cognition of the particular and the ‘that’) and the distinctive capacity for reason (which makes possible cognition of the universal and the ‘why’) in human behaviour. The rest of the paper applies this framework to a number of problems in the Poetics: (i) If Aristotelian tekhnê is defined as a productive disposition involving reason, how can poetic tekhnê be manifested in the work of poets who work by non-rational habit or talent? (ii) Why does Aristotle believe that the pleasure taken in imitation qua imitation involves rational inference? (iii) What does Aristotle mean when he contrasts history (concerned with the particular) and poetry (concerned with the universal)? (iv) How is Aristotle’s insistence on universality and rationality in the construction of poetic plots to be reconciled with his willingness to tolerate irrationalities and implausibilities

On the factors causing processing difficulty of multiple-scene displays

Multiplex viewing of static or dynamic scenes is an increasing feature of screen media. Most existing multiplex experiments have examined detection across increasing scene numbers, but currently no systematic evaluation of the factors that might produce difficulty in processing multiplexes exists. Across five experiments we provide such an evaluation. Experiment 1 characterises difficulty in change detection when the number of scenes is increased. Experiment 2 reveals that the increased difficulty across multiple-scene displays is caused by the total amount of visual information accounts for differences in change detection times, regardless of whether this information is presented across multiple scenes, or contained in one scene. Experiment 3 shows that whether quadrants of a display were drawn from the same, or different scenes did not affect change detection performance. Experiment 4 demonstrates that knowing which scene the change will occur in means participants can perform at monoplex level. Finally, Experiment 5 finds that changes of central interest in multiplexed scenes are detected far easier than marginal interest changes to such an extent that a centrally interesting object removal in nine screens is detected more rapidly than a marginally interesting object removal in four screens. Processing multiple-screen displays therefore seems dependent on the amount of information, and the importance of that information to the task, rather than simply the number of scenes in the display. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of these findings

Word skipping: implications for theories of eye movement control in reading

This chapter provides a meta-analysis of the factors that govern word skipping in reading. It is concluded that the primary predictor is the length of the word to be skipped. A much smaller effect is due to the processing ease of the word (e.g., the frequency of the word and its predictability in the sentence)

Child development and the aims of road safety education

Pedestrian accidents are one of the most prominent causes of premature injury, handicap and death in the modern world. In children, the problem is so severe that pedestrian accidents are widely regarded as the most serious of all health risks facing children in developed countries. Not surprisingly, educational measures have long been advocated as a means of teaching children how to cope with traffic and substantial resources have been devoted to their development and provision. Unfortunately, there seems to be a widespread view at the present time that education has not achieved as much as had been hoped and that there may even be quite strict limits to what can be achieved through education. This would, of course, shift the emphasis away from education altogether towards engineering or urban planning measures aimed at creating an intrinsically safer environment in which the need for education might be reduced or even eliminated. However, whilst engineering measures undoubtedly have a major role to play in the effort to reduce accidents, this outlook is both overly optimistic about the benefits of engineering and overly pessimistic about the limitations of education. At the same time, a fresh analysis is clearly required both of the aims and methods of contemporary road safety education. The present report is designed to provide such an analysis and to establish a framework within which further debate and research can take place