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Situation awareness (SA) is a widely used cognitive construct in human factors, often theoretically posited to be a critical causal factor and/or construct for performance. However, there are conce...

Summary Stereotypes can harm human performance, especially when activated in individuals with diminished working memory capacity (WMC). Performance implications for the stereotype of poor driving in older adults were investigated. Using a sample of older adults, WMC (the ability to maintain task goals and ignore distractions) and driving performance [brake reaction time (RT), following distance, and crashes] were assessed, the latter using a high-fidelity simulator. Elderly participants under stereotype threat with reduced WMC exhibited slower brake RTs and longer following distances compared with a control condition that was not threatened. This driving profile was characteristic of cognitive distraction. Stereotype threat has clear consequences for human performance in a common real-world task—driving—that is critical to public safety. Furthermore, these findings suggest caution in how the media and public policy communicate information about older adult driving.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Repeated measures correlation (rmcorr) is a statistical technique for determining the common within-individual association for paired measures assessed on two or more occasions for multiple individuals (Bland & Altman, 1995a; Bland & Altman, 1995b). Simple regression/correlation is often applied to non-independent observations or aggregated data; this may produce biased, specious results due to violation of independence and/or differing patterns between-participants versus within-participants. Unlike simple regression/correlation, rmcorr does not violate the assumption of independence of observations. Also, rmcorr tends to have much greater statistical power because neither averaging nor aggregation is necessary for an intra-individual research question. Rmcorr estimates the common regression slope, the association shared among individuals. To make rmcorr accessible, we provide background information for its assumptions and equations, visualization, power, and types of modeling pooling (variance): Including tradeoffs with rmcorr compared to multi-level modeling. We introduce the R package (rmcorr) and demonstrate its use for inferential statistics and visualization with two example datasets. The examples are used to illustrate research questions at different levels of analysis, intra-individual and inter-individual. Rmcorr is well-suited for research questions regarding the common linear association in paired repeated measures data. All results are fully reproducible.

Cybernetics provides a framework for understanding the behavior of closed-loop systems, including the feedback control intrinsic to cognitive systems (Smith and Smith in continuing the conversation: a newsletter of ideas in cybernetics. Greg and Pat Williams, Gravel Switch, KY, [1]). We propose adopting our interpretation of the cybernetics concept of feedback control of cognition by integrating across metacognition, performance, computational cognitive modeling, and physiological levels of analysis. To accomplish this objective, we tie cognitive variables to each level of analysis, including: (1) metacognition—self-evaluation of cognition; (2) performance—objective measures of progress toward a goal state; (3) physiology—indications of cognitive function (e.g., heart rate variability as an index of the level of task engagement); and (4) cognitive models—prediction and understanding of empirical results using sequences of cognitive steps. We call this integrative approach, Multi-Level Cognitive Cybernetics (MLCC). In this paper, we define the MLCC framework, discuss how MLCC can inform the design of adaptive automation technologies, and discuss the benefits of the MLCC approach in human factors.

We report on three experiments that investigate the efficacy of a new type of interface called a virtual verbal display (VVD) for nonvisual learning and navigation of virtual environments (VEs). Although verbal information has been studied for route-guidance, little is known about the use of context-sensitive, speech-based displays (e.g., the VVD) for supporting free exploration and wayfinding behavior. During training, participants used the VVD (Experiments I and II) or a visual display (Experiment III) to search the VEs and find four hidden target locations. At test, all participants performed a route-finding task in the corresponding real environment, navigating with vision (Experiments I and III) or from verbal descriptions (Experiment II). Training performance between virtual display modes was comparable, but wayfinding in the real environment was worse after VVD learning than visual learning, regardless of the testing modality. Our results support the efficacy of the VVD for searching computer-based environments but indicate a difference in the cognitive maps built up between verbal and visual learning, perhaps due to lack of physical movement in the VVD.

Previous research has suggested that perceived distances are scaled by the action capabilities of the body. The present studies showed that when "reachability" is constrained due to a difficult grasp required to pick up an object, perceived distance to the object increases. Participants estimated the distances to tools with handle orientations that made them either easy or difficult to grasp with their dominant and nondominant hands. Right-handed participants perceived tools that were more difficult to grasp to be farther away than tools that were easier to grasp. However, perceived distance did not differ in left-handed participants. These studies suggest that, when reaching toward a target, the distance to that target is scaled in terms of how far one can effectively reach, given the type of reaching posture that is executed. Furthermore, this effect is modulated by handedness.

Spatial perception is sensitive to the energetic costs required to perform intended actions. For example, hills look steeper to people who are fatigued or burdened by a heavy load. Similarly, perceived distance is also influenced by the energy required to walk or throw to a target. Such experiments demonstrate that perception is a function, not just of optical information, but also of the perceiver’s potential to act and the energetic costs associated with the intended action. In the current paper, we expand on the notion of “cost” by examining perceived distance in patients diagnosed with chronic pain, a multifactorial disease, which is experienced while walking. We found that chronic pain patients perceive target distances to be farther away compared with a control group. These results indicate the physical, and perhaps emotional, costs of chronic pain affect spatial perceptions.

This work investigates whether large-scale indoor layouts can be learned and navigated non-visually, using verbal descriptions of layout geometry that are updated, e.g. contingent on a participant's location in a building. In previous research, verbal information has been used to facilitate route following, not to support free exploration and wayfinding. Our results with blindfolded-sighted participants demonstrate that accurate learning and wayfinding performance is possible using verbal descriptions and that it is sufficient to describe only local geometric detail. In addition, no differences in learning or navigation performance were observed between the verbal study and a control study using visual input. Verbal learning was also compared to the performance of a random walk model, demonstrating that human search behavior is not based on chance decision-making. However, the model performed more like human participants after adding a constraint that biased it against reversing direction.

People have a lifetime of experience in which to calibrate their self-produced locomotion with the resultant optical flow. Contrary to walking across the ground, however, walking on a treadmill produces minimal optical flow, and consequentially, a perceptual-motor aftereffect results. We demonstrate that the magnitude of this perceptual-motor aftereffect—measured by forward drift while attempting to march in-place following treadmill walking—decreases as experience walking on a treadmill is acquired over time. Experience with treadmill walking enables walking in this context to become sufficiently distinguished from walking in other contexts. Consequently, two distinct perceptual-motor calibration states are maintained, each linked to the context in which walking occurs. Experience with treadmill walking maintains perceptual-motor calibration accuracy in both walking contexts, despite changes to the relationship between perception and action.

Perception of one's body is related not only to the physical appearance of the body, but also to the neural representation of the body. The brain contains many body maps that systematically differ between right- and left-handed people. In general, the cortical representations of the right arm and right hand tend to be of greater area in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere for right-handed people, whereas these cortical representations tend to be symmetrical across hemispheres for left-handers. We took advantage of these naturally occurring differences and examined perceived arm length in right- and left-handed people. When looking at each arm and hand individually, right-handed participants perceived their right arms and right hands to be longer than their left arms and left hands, whereas left-handed participants perceived both arms accurately. These experiments reveal a possible relationship between implicit body maps in the brain and conscious perception of the body.

When people are engaged in a skilled behavior, such as occurs in sports, their perceptions relate optical information to their performance. In the present research, we demonstrate the effects of performance on size perception in golfers. We found that golfers who played better judged the hole to be bigger than did golfers who did not play as well. In follow-up laboratory experiments, participants putted on a golf mat from a location near or far from the hole and then judged the size of the hole. Participants who putted from the near location perceived the hole to be bigger than did participants who putted from the far location. Our results demonstrate that perception is influenced by the perceiver's current ability to act effectively in the environment.