Cognition

1. Cognition Rebecca W. Boren, Ph.D. IEE 437/547 October 12, 2011

2. Cognition What is a Mental Model?

3. Cognition What is a Mental Model? Memory for procedures or how things work

4. Cognition How to use an ATM or ride a bicycle.

5. Cognition Case Study: The Wrong Mental Model Can Kill You Kenneth Nemire Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 51st Annual Meeting - 2007

6. Cognition What is your mental model of a roller coaster?

7. Cognition

8. Cognition TOP GUN An inverted roller coaster

9. Cognition • Hanging roller coasters have only been around for 20 years. • They comprise 4% of the world’s roller coasters.

10. Cognition Research Results • All of group 1 (118 students) and all of • group 2 (31 attorneys) drew pictures of • a sit-down roller coaster. • Of the 19 people exiting the theme park (group 3), 76% • drew a picture of a sit-down roller coaster. This park had • a higher than usual number of inverted roller coasters – • 75%.

11. Mental models Thinking Remembering Forgetting Learning Attention Schemata Understanding Comprehension Situation awareness Time-sharing or multi- tasking Knowledge in the Head Information processing & storage Cognition involves

12. Cognition Every day we process large amounts of information.

13. Cognition

14. Cognition What do you see?

15. Cognition What do you see?

16. Cognition

18. Cognition Mental or cognitive resources are of limited availability and must be allocated. This requires mental effort.

19. Cognition Selective attention focuses on some information and not on other information.

20. Cognition Attentional Capture The understanding of information processing is important to designing alarms and displays.

21. Cognition Attentional Capture • Bottom up: when stimulus quality is high bottom-up processing will dominate. • Top down: we “sample” the world where we expect to find information. How long we attend to the signal depends on its value.

22. Cognition Attentional Capture Effort: we prefer to scan short distances rather than long ones. We prefer to avoid head movements to select information sources. Why fatigued drivers fail to turn their head and look behind them.

23. Cognition • Salience (conspicuous, unambiguous, clear, obvious) features • Effort • Expectancy • Value Selective Attention

24. Cognition • Extract meaning from information processed by our senses. • Cognition compares incoming information with stored knowledge in order to categorize. Perceptional Processes

25. Cognition • Bottom-up feature analysis. • Top-down processing. • Unitization (stimuli seen as a whole). • Children see letters; adults see words. Three Perceptional Processes

26. Cognition Do you see a letter imbedded in the lines?

27. Cognition What if we put the lines closer together?

28. Cognition High expectations are based on associations and context. Turn the machine … when the red light indicates failure.

29. Cognition Understanding Comprehension relies on working memory unlike perception.

30. Cognition

31. Cognition Working Memory • Working memory is limited in capacity: 7 ± 2 chunks. • Working memory is limited in duration: 7 to 70 seconds. • Working memory is also called short-term memory (STM).

32. Cognition Working Memory • A chunk is defined as one bit of information. • Examples: RXF is 3 chunks, while CUP is a single chunk. • NAT is 1 chunk because it is pronounceable.

33. Cognition Working Memory • Create chunks by making spaces or grouping: (480) 965-7258. • Social security numbers are chunked. xxx-xx-xxxx

34. Cognition Working Memory • Words are easier to remember than numbers: 1-800-FLOWERS. • Similarly sounding letters can be more easily confused than letters that sound different. DPZETG versus JTFWRU • Group letters and numbers together, not mixed: ABC123 rather than A1B2C3.

35. Cognition Short-term Memory

36. Working memory is encoded in three ways. Visual Phonetic Semantic Cognition Working Memory

37. Working memory is encoded in three ways. Visual DOG Phonetic “dawg” Semantic Cognition Working Memory

38. Errors are usually acoustic rather than visual. E may be recalled as D rather than F E sounds like D rather than F, although E and F look more alike. Cognition Working Memory

39. Cognition Working Memory • Avoid negatives. “Do not turn off the equipment” may be heard as “Turn off the equipment.”

40. Cognition Working Memory • Instruction should be followed by action. • “For billing, press 1” • “I want roast beef, 3/4 of a pound”

41. Cognition Working Memory • Attention can be diverted. • Example: cell phone use while driving. • Bathing a baby interrupted by the telephone ringing.

42. For information to be transferred from STM to LTM, the person must direct their attention and make some effort. Cognition

43. End of Part 1 Cognition Next time we will talk about the different memory systems and how to transfer STM into LTM

44. Cognition Long-term Memory • Lasts a lifetime. • Retrieval may pose a problem. • Unlimited capacity.

45. Cognition Long-term Memory • Two types of LTM: • General Knowledge: schemata & mental models • Event memory: episodic & prospective

46. Semantic memory is part of LTM. Knowledge is organized into semantic networks where sections of the network contains related pieces of information. Cognition Semantic Memory

47. Associations are similar to Databases Networks Not like a filing cabinet Information is related in a meaningful way. Cognition Semantic Memory

48. Cognition Long-term Memory • Information in STM is transferred to LTM by semantically encoding it. • Reading the textbook over and over is not enough. The material needs to be related to past experience in some meaningful way.

49. Information stored in associative networks. Memory we use for daily activity is semantic knowledge. Our knowledge is stored in semantic networks. Cognition Organization of LTM – General Knowledge

50. Cognition The Brain is made up of Neurons (HIGHLY SPECIALIZED CELLS THAT GENERATE AND CONDUCT NERVE IMPULSES). http://www.nku.edu/~dempseyd/bio208pg8.htm