From the category archives:

cognition/memory

Visual Search and Airport Security Screening

by Anne McLaughlin
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Funny I should have mentioned conjunction search the other day, since this post is all about new research by Jeremy Wolfe who has and continues to contribute to the visual search literature.
In this new work, already mentioned on i09, Wolfe and his former research assistant Michael van Wert investigated complex visual search as it applies to baggage scanning at airport [...]

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3D is better than 2D, right?

by Richard Pak
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It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to [...]

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Human Factors and Healthcare: The older patient & nurse

by Richard Pak
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I‘ve recently published two papers on the topic of human factors and healthcare. Each paper covers a different “stakeholder”: the older patient and the nurse.  The first paper is available for free but the second paper (a collaboration with my architect colleague Dina Battisto) is available at your local library (or you can request a PDF reprint from me).
Pak, R., [...]

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Medication Adherence Case Study

by Anne McLaughlin
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I talked with an 80 year old man last weekend about how he remembers to take his medication. His solution?
Put all the pills in one bottle and take out what he needs each day. It appears to be an anti-organizer.
If you or your loved ones are more interested in environmental support, a new free application created by Consumer Reports [...]

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HFES Conference in San Antonio, Part 4 – Hearing and Understanding

by Anne McLaughlin

The paper described in this post was part of the Aging Technical Group sessions at HFES.
Hearing Levels Affect Higher-Order Cognitive Performance – Carryl L. Baldwin, George Mason University
Perhaps I was excited by this talk because I could see how the information could be used in the book Rich and I are working on. This presentation was a fascinating exploration of [...]

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HFES Conference in San Antonio, Part 3 – Health/Internet…and ROBOTS!

by Richard Pak
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One of my major interests at the moment is in the use of technological tools (primarily the Web) in the management of health.  So it was with great pleasure that there was so much research on this topic (I will mention more in future posts).
The first was presented in the Aging session (where Anne was program chair).  Jessie [...]

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Usability issues in navigating your life

by Richard Pak

Gordon Bell, a Microsoft Researcher, is recording his life in excruciating detail in a project dubbed MyLifeBits:
Web sites he’s visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164).
Why is he [...]

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Time.com article on Anne’s research with Games & Aging

by Richard Pak
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Our own Anne McLaughlin was featured in a recent article in Time.com.  Anne and her colleagues Jason Allaire (NCSU) and Maribeth Gandy (Georgia Tech) were recently awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study using games to moderate cognitive decline in older adults.
Their plan is to study what parts of games might help cognitive performance and [...]

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Smartphones as Event-based Prospective Memory Aids

by Richard Pak
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The calendar functions of devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and  smartphones have always been types of time-based prospective memory aids.  An item to be remembered in the future (e.g., go to meeting at 4 pm) is entered into the calendar and when that time arrives we are reminded with a notification or alarm (hence the term time-based).
Prospective memory [...]

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Applied Decision Making Aids in the News

by Anne McLaughlin

NPR covers ways psychologists have discovered to nudge irrational decisions  in a better direction.
An excerpt:
In the city of Greensboro, N.C., there’s a program designed for teenage mothers. To prevent these teens from having another child, the city offers each of them $1 a day for every day they are not pregnant. It turns out that the psychological power of that [...]

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Invisible Lines and Laundry Detergent

by Anne McLaughlin

Consumer Reports tackled a pet peeve of mine: the invisible fill lines for laundry detergent. Most of you are probably using too much.. I finally took a sharpie to mine. Some excerpts from the Consumer Reports article:
“If the lines aren’t clear or are hard to see, it’s easy to overdose and use too much detergent,” says Pat Slaven, a program [...]

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Emergency Checklists and Aviation

by Anne McLaughlin

The recent water landing into the Hudson is still being investigated. This AP article focuses on whether flight attendants were trained not to open the back door of the plane during a water landing, but the most interesting bit comes at the end:
Another concern is whether the FAA and airlines need to revise emergency procedures for pilots in the event [...]

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Cannot be Undone (double negatives on iphone)

by Richard Pak

I just saw this image from Apple’s introduction of the new iPhone:
Notice the wording:  I understand that this action cannot be undone or cancelled [ed: British spelling, huh].
Does that mean it can be done?  Not a huge deal but the double negative slowed me down for a second.  Not a place where there should be any confusion!  Off-topic, I just [...]

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“Smart” devices may help dementia sufferers remember to shut off stove, live at home longer

by Richard Pak

From Peter Squire (of The Daily Human Factor) another interesting story on using technology to support aging in place:
“The whole objective is to enable people to stay at home as long as they can,” says Bruce Carey-Smith, a BIME design engineer. The system reports the wealth of information it collects—from potential problems to successful interventions—to health care providers. “It’s about [...]

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Personalized User Interfaces

by Richard Pak

Researchers at the University of Washington have created a system that can tailor a user interface to the motor and visual abilities of the user.  After a short assessment, the system presents a user interface with presets for the user based on the assessment.  I remember reading about adaptive interfaces quite a long time ago.  Could something similar be built [...]

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Older adults prefer less choice than younger adults

by Richard Pak

In the recent issue of the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers Andrew Reed, Joseph Mikels, and Kosali Simon examined whether older adults would prefer having fewer options when faced with a decision-making task.  Confirming previous research, they found that across 6 domains (e.g., prescription health plans, hospitals), older adults preferred having fewer options rather than greater.
In their study, 102 older [...]

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