Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

Despite considerable interest in both action perception and social attention over the last 2 decades, there has been surprisingly little investigation concerning how the manual actions of other humans orient visual attention. The present review draws together studies that have measured the orienting of attention, following observation of another’s goal-directed action. Our review proposes that, in line with the literature on eye gaze, action is a particularly strong orienting cue for the visual system. However, we additionally suggest that action may orient visual attention using mechanisms, which gaze direction does not (i.e., neural direct mapping and corepresentation). Finally, we review the implications of these gaze-independent mechanisms for the study of attention to action. We suggest that our understanding of attention to action may benefit from being studied in the context of joint action paradigms, where the role of higher level action goals and social factors can be investigated

Customer complaint resolution at FCHP

Our team performed a Six-Sigma analysis on the customer service call center of Fallon Community Health Plan (FCHP), a non-profit health insurance provider in Worcester, Massachusetts. Through root cause analysis into the customer service center's call volume, a series of overturned appeals cases, and member portal usage statistics, we were able to make recommendations on regional service, advertising, and data validation. These proposed process design changes are expected to decrease call volume and increase customer satisfaction

Improved Client Service Model

Vision Australia (VA), a non-profit, blind services organization, is currently operating under three separate client service models, which are remnants of its recent merger. This project was established to examine archival evidence of the pre-merger organizations, interview VA staff, and consult similar international service organizations to explore solutions to challenges that VA will face in the formation of their new client service model. Analysis of these data has generated a set of recommendations for VA's client service model development team