cognition/memory

Human Factors and Healthcare: The older patient & nurse

December 10, 2009
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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, [...]

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Medication Adherence Case Study

December 9, 2009
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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 [...]

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

November 3, 2009

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 [...]

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

October 29, 2009
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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 Chin [...]

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Usability issues in navigating your life

September 8, 2009

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 [...]

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

July 13, 2009
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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 [...]

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Smartphones as Event-based Prospective Memory Aids

June 18, 2009
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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 [...]

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Applied Decision Making Aids in the News

June 12, 2009

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 [...]

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Invisible Lines and Laundry Detergent

June 11, 2009

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 [...]

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Emergency Checklists and Aviation

June 10, 2009

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 [...]

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Cannot be Undone (double negatives on iphone)

June 8, 2009

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, [...]

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

March 5, 2009

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 [...]

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Personalized User Interfaces

November 29, 2008

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

September 29, 2008

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 [...]

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Tag-based interfaces and Aging

September 10, 2008

I was recently interviewed by our campus news service about receiving a Google Research Award to study information retrieval and aging. The research involves designing information retrieval interfaces around the capabilities and limitations of older adults (those age 60 and above). Here is a snippet from the press release: Richard Pak, an assistant professor of psychology, has received a $50,000 [...]

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You are what you eat (And I’m about a B-)

August 26, 2008

Like many people, I use heuristics when choosing between food products. My algorithm goes something like this: What’s the lowest unit price? 25 cents per ounce vs. 40 cents per ounce? Pick up the lowest Look at the saturated fat RDI If reasonable, look at ingredients Is list too long to read in 3 seconds? If yes, pick up next [...]

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