Using PVS to support the analysis of distributed cognition systems

The rigorous analysis of socio-technical systems is challenging, because people are inherent parts of the system, together with devices and artefacts. In this paper, we report on the use of PVS as a way of analysing such systems in terms of distributed cognition. Distributed cognition is a conceptual framework that allows us to derive insights about plausible user trajectories in socio-technical systems by exploring what information in the environment provides resources for user action, but its application has traditionally required substantial craft skill. DiCoT adds structure and method to the analysis of socio-technical systems from a distributed cognition perspective. In this work, we demonstrate how PVS can be used with DiCoT to conduct a systematic analysis. We illustrate how a relatively simple use of PVS can help a field researcher to (i) externalise assumptions and facts, (ii) verify the consistency of the logical argument framed in the descriptions, (iii) help uncover latent situations that may warrant further investigation, and (iv) verify conjectures about potential hazards linked to the observed use of information resources. Evidence is also provided that formal methods and empirical studies are not alternative approaches for studying a socio-technical system, but that they can complement and refine each other. The combined use of PVS and DiCoT is illustrated through a case study concerning a real-world emergency medical dispatch system

Layers, resources and property templates in the specification and analysis of two interactive systems

The paper briefly explores a layered approach to the analysis of two interactive systems (Nuclear Control and Air Traffic Control), indicating how the analysis enables exploration of the particular features emphasised by the use cases relating to the examples. These features relate to the interactive behaviour of the systems. To facilitate the analysis, property templates are proposed as heuristics for developing appropriate requirements for the respective user interfaces.Jose Creissac Campos and Michael Harrison were funded by ´ project ref. NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-000062, co-financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (ON.2 O Novo Norte), under the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by national funds, through the Portuguese foundation for science and technology (FCT). Paul Curzon, Michael Harrison and Paolo Masci were funded by the CHI+MED project: Multidisciplinary Computer Human Interaction Research for the design and safe use of interactive medical devices project, UK EPSRC Grant Number EP/G059063/1.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Generic User Interface Architecture for Analyzing Use Hazards in Infusion Pump Software

This paper presents a generic infusion pump user interface (GIP-UI) architecture that intends to capture the common characteristics and functionalities of interactive software incorporated in broad classes of infusion pumps. It is designed to facilitate the identification of use hazards and their causes in infusion pump designs. This architecture constitutes our first effort at establishing a model-based risk analysis methodology that helps manufacturers identify and mitigate use hazards in their products at early stages of the development life-cycle. The applicability of the GIP-UI architecture has been confirmed in a hazard analysis focusing on the number entry software of existing infusion pumps, in which the GIP-UI architecture is used to identify a substantial set of user interface design errors that may contribute to use hazards found in infusion pump incidents

Accident Analysis Methods and Models — a Systematic Literature Review

As part of our co-operation with the Telecommunication Agency of the Netherlands, we want to formulate an accident analysis method and model for use in incidents in telecommunications that cause service unavailability. In order to not re-invent the wheel, we wanted to first get an overview of all existing accident analysis methods and models to see if we could find an overarching method and commonalities between models. Furthermore, we wanted to find any methods that had been applied to incidents in telecommunication networks or even been designed specifically for these incidents. In this article, we present a systematic literature review of incident and accident analysis methods across domains. We find that accident analysis methods have experienced a rise in attention over the last 15 years, leading to a plethora of methods. We discuss the three classes in which they are often categorized. We find that each class has its own advantages and disadvantages: an analysis using a sequential method may be easier to understand and communicate and quicker to execute, but may miss vital underlying causes that can later trigger new, similar accidents. An analysis using an epidemiological method takes more time, but it also finds underlying causes the resolution of which may prevent accidents from happening in the future. Systemic methods are appropriate for complex, tightly coupled systems and executing such a method takes a lot of time and resources, rendering it very expensive. This will often not be justified by the costs of the accident (especially in telecommunications networks) and it will therefore be too expensive to be employed in regular businesses. We were not able to find any published definitions of structured methods specific to telecommunications, nor did we find any applications of structured methods specifically to telecommunications

Development of New Methods to Support Systemic Incident Analysis.

PhDExplaining incidents as systems is a fast growing area of safety scientific research. The misleading conception of naturalistic human communication in terms of ‘objective information’ remains a pervasive influence on systemic explanation of incidents, despite over a decade of methodological developments in the area. Currently, interested stakeholders are offered with few alternatives for analysing how information systems emerge naturally, and contribute towards the structuring of incident situations. Extant methods are also yet to be widely adopted by the practitioner community, and a research-practice gap has formed. In this PhD research, a new method of systemic incident analysis is developed, to counterbalance against the extant methods being developed in the area. The new method draws on insights from both Distributed Cognition, and linguistics research, in order to present a distributed means of doing systemic incident analysis. The new method de-objectifies the notion of information, to support analysis of how information ‘flow’ is constitutive of the formation of distributed cognitive systems. In embedding an intersubjective component into the core method design, we aim to increase the likelihood of systematic learning from incident situations. The incident analyst is required to explicitly relate past explanations of incident situations, in detail, to data and hypotheses from new incident situations. To increase the potential for theorists in the area to better account for the demands of incident analysis as practiced, data, insights, and method are contributed towards the bridges been built between research and practice. We first develop additional understanding of the practice of incident analysts from the patient safety background. Next, we provide a second new method of analysis, to allow research scrutiny of the empirical phenomena of using systemic incident analysis methods. This second method considers the detailed relationship: from the theory of the systemic incident analysis method into its practice as part of real incident investigation. This provides a new research instrument, for systematically examining how systemic incident analysis methods may afford or constrain elements of their practice.EPSRC CHI+MED project (http://www.chi-med.ac.uk/, EP/G059063/1)

The meditating effect of a psychological wellbeing profile in the bullying and turnover intention relation

The research focused on constructing a psychological wellbeing profile for employee wellness and talent retention practices by investigating employees’ psychological wellbeing-related attributes (constituting self-esteem, emotional intelligence, hardiness, work engagement and psychosocial flourishing), and whether these significantly mediate the relation between their experiences of bullying and their intention to leave the organisation when controlling for bullying, age, gender, race, tenure and job level. A quantitative survey was conducted on a convenience sample of employed adults (N = 373) of different age, gender, race, tenure and job level groups from various South African organisations. The canonical statistical procedures indicated work engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and hardiness (commitment-alienation) as the strongest psychological wellbeing-related dispositional attributes in the workplace bullying and turnover intention relationship. The mediation modelling results showed that workplace bullying significantly predicted turnover intention, which in turn, significantly predicted either high/low levels of work engagement (vigour and dedication) in one’s work. Self-esteem, emotional intelligence or hardiness did not seem likely to influence the relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention. The multiple regression analysis indicated that participants’ biographical variables (age, gender, race and job level) significantly predicted workplace bullying, self-esteem, emotional intelligence, hardiness, work engagement and psychosocial flourishing, and turnover intention. The tests for significant mean differences indicated that participants from various biographical groups (age, gender, race, tenure and job level) statistically significantly differed regarding workplace bullying (independent variable), the psychological wellbeing-related variables, namely self-esteem, emotional intelligence, hardiness, employee engagement, psychosocial flourishing (mediating variables) and turnover intention (dependent variable). On a theoretical level, the study deepened understanding of the cognitive, affective and conative behavioural dimensions of the hypothesised psychological wellbeing profile. On an empirical level, the main findings were reported and interpreted in terms of an empirically derived psychological wellbeing profile based on the work engagement of the participants. On a practical level, the findings provided valuable guidelines for the development of talent retention and wellness interventions, which might add to the body of knowledge relating to psychological wellbeing-related dispositional attributes that influenced workplace bullying and talent retentionIndustrial and Organisational PsychologyD. Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology

To share or not to share : a case study of six Chinese immigrant children’s sharing behaviors during social pretend play in a US preschool classroom

textGuided by Vygotsky’s and Corsaro’s theories, this dissertation investigated Chinese immigrant children’s sharing behaviors, including initiating sharing behaviors and responding to sharing requests, as well as their parents’ and teachers’ descriptions of the children’s sharing behaviors. Six Chinese immigrant children along with 16 non-Chinese children aged three to five years old were observed and recorded in a preschool classroom and analyzed to understand their sharing behaviors. Classroom teachers and Chinese immigrant parents were interviewed to ascertain their views about Chinese immigrant children’s sharing behaviors. Data from the video and audio transcriptions, together with field notes and the researcher’s reflection journal, were coded and analyzed. Findings indicated that the six Chinese immigrant children verbally requested sharing to initiate sharing behaviors by verbally inviting peers to join an activity or verbally offering to share materials. They nonverbally initiated sharing by using the same materials with others and by passing or handing materials to their peers. When responding to sharing requests, the six Chinese immigrant children accepted the requests verbally or nonverbally. They also rejected the sharing requests or ignored them if they didn’t want to share. When rejection and conflicts in terms of sharing were encountered in social pretend play, the six Chinese immigrant children sometimes accepted rejections by abandoning the sharing intentions, doing something else, or turning to follow the playmates’ commands, and they shared passively to avoid conflicts. The Chinese immigrant parents in this study urged sharing and encouraged their children to search for adults’ help when they encountered conflicts with peers. Teachers noticed language barriers among the six Chinese immigrant children and how this obstacle influenced their social interactions. In addition, gender differences existed in the children’s sharing behaviors. The six Chinese immigrant children spoke in Chinese during their social pretend play. Their language preference and capability influenced their sharing behaviors. They tended to share ideas and knowledge in Mandarin with other Chinese children. English inferiority led to infrequent interactions with American children and limited their sharing opportunities. Findings suggested that early childhood educators and parents need to pay more attention to children’s sharing behaviors. Providing more support and encouraging the Chinese immigrant children to speak up for themselves could help these children better deal with conflicts in terms of sharing. Recommendations for future research are described in the dissertation.Curriculum and Instructio

Usability analysis of contending electronic health record systems

In this paper, we report measured usability of two leading EHR systems during procurement. A total of 18 users participated in paired-usability testing of three scenarios: ordering and managing medications by an outpatient physician, medicine administration by an inpatient nurse and scheduling of appointments by nursing staff. Data for audio, screen capture, satisfaction rating, task success and errors made was collected during testing. We found a clear difference between the systems for percentage of successfully completed tasks, two different satisfaction measures and perceived learnability when looking at the results over all scenarios. We conclude that usability should be evaluated during procurement and the difference in usability between systems could be revealed even with fewer measures than were used in our study. © 2019 American Psychological Association Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

COVID-19 Booster Vaccine Acceptance in Ethnic Minority Individuals in the United Kingdom: a mixed-methods study using Protection Motivation Theory

Background: Uptake of the COVID-19 booster vaccine among ethnic minority individuals has been lower than in the general population. However, there is little research examining the psychosocial factors that contribute to COVID-19 booster vaccine hesitancy in this population.Aim: Our study aimed to determine which factors predicted COVID-19 vaccination intention in minority ethnic individuals in Middlesbrough, using Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, in addition to demographic variables.Method: We used a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data were collected using an online survey. Qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews. 64 minority ethnic individuals (33 females, 31 males; mage = 31.06, SD = 8.36) completed the survey assessing PMT constructs, COVID-19conspiracy beliefs and demographic factors. 42.2% had received the booster vaccine, 57.6% had not. 16 survey respondents were interviewed online to gain further insight into factors affecting booster vaccineacceptance.Results: Multiple regression analysis showed that perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 was a significant predictor of booster vaccination intention, with higher perceived susceptibility being associated with higher intention to get the booster. Additionally, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs significantly predictedintention to get the booster vaccine, with higher conspiracy beliefs being associated with lower intention to get the booster dose. Thematic analysis of the interview data showed that barriers to COVID-19 booster vaccination included time constraints and a perceived lack of practical support in the event ofexperiencing side effects. Furthermore, there was a lack of confidence in the vaccine, with individuals seeing it as lacking sufficient research. Participants also spoke of medical mistrust due to historical events involving medical experimentation on minority ethnic individuals.Conclusion: PMT and conspiracy beliefs predict COVID-19 booster vaccination in minority ethnic individuals. To help increase vaccine uptake, community leaders need to be involved in addressing people’s concerns, misassumptions, and lack of confidence in COVID-19 vaccination