R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Lane, David M."

Browsing by Author "Lane, David M."

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A comparative analysis of data entry devices and typing modes
(1985) Holden, Kritina L.; Lane, David M.; Howell, William C.; Laughery, Kenneth R.
In our technology oriented society, data entry and manipulation are some of the most important tasks in which the human is involved. The present research is concerned with optimization of data entry via a computer keyboard. There is evidence that foot pedal devices could prove beneficial when used in conjunction with a keyboard for complex data entry. In the present research, the viability of a foot pedal entry device and a parallel mode of keystroking were examined. These two conditions, along with the standard key input and serial mode of keystroking were compared in two studies. Results showed that for inexperienced or unskilled typists, the addition of a foot pedal does not provide for better performance. Subjects performing with a foot pedal were consistently faster but committed more errors. Worst performance was noted for subjects using the foot pedal in a serial mode. There are indications in the data which suggest that high-skill typists may be able to more successfully adapt to using a foot pedal device, and may also be more able to coordinate their limbs in order to take advantage of the benefits of parallel entry. Implications for these results in light of current computer system design are discussed.
A computational model of routine procedural memory
(2009) Tamborello, Franklin Patrick, II; Byrne, Michael D.; Kortum, Philip T.; Lane, David M.; Autry, Lynette S.; Dannemiller, James L.; Napier, Albert H.
Cooper and Shallice (2000) implemented a computational version of the Norman and Shallice's (1986) Contention Scheduling Model (CSM). The CSM is a hierarchically organized network of action schemas and goals. Botvinick and Plaut (2004) instead took a connectionist approach to modeling routine procedural behavior. They argued in favor of holistic, distributed representation of learned step co-occurrence associations. Two experiments found that people can adapt routine procedural behavior to changing circumstances quite readily and that other factors besides statistical co-occurrence can have influence on action selection. A CSM-inspired ACT-R model of the two experiments is the first to postdict differential error rates across multiple between-subjects conditions and trial types. Results from the behavioral and modeling studies favor a CSM-like theory of human routine procedural memory that uses discrete, hierarchically-organized goal and action representations that are adaptable to new but similar procedures.
A multi-faceted model of the consequences of sample size choice in usability testing
(2008) Yang, Minmin; Lane, David M.
A multi-faceted model is developed to demonstrate the consequences of sample size choice in usability testing. This model takes into account the severity levels of user performance, the distribution of severity levels, the impact of usability problems, the benefit of improving user interface components, and the decision-making regarding which usability problems to solve. A large-scale usability test (N=103) of two products (Connexions and Snapfish) was carried out to provide real-world empirical data for the multi-faceted model. Simulations based on both the empirical data and other possible situations in usability testing were done to demonstrate the sample size influence on the estimation of severity, impact, and benefit given various types of parameters. The results showed that there were great risks in using small samples in various situations, especially when the shapes of the distributions of severity levels were positively skewed or bimodal. The results also indicated that user distributions at different severity levels and the impact weights of the usability problems had the most influence whereas the improvement factors and the improvement schemes had little influence on the sample size requirements. In addition, the user distribution data from the empirical study were transformed to dichotomous data. The analysis of the dichotomous data, together with the simulations based on the dichotomous data and the binomial model used frequently by the previous researchers, showed that the assumptions of usability problem independence and homogeneous users for the binomial model were seriously violated in such a way as to greatly overestimate the rate of problem detection.
A principal components analysis of the professional and managerial position questionnaire with a subsequent translation into a task-oriented job analysis procedure
(1982) Wedding, Daryl L.; Thomas, Jay C.; Howell, William C.; Lane, David M.
Data was collected on 74 professional and managerial jobs using the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PMPQ). In the first study a principal components analysis was performed with eight principal components being selected for rotation and interpretation. These components were compared to the original ten components found in the developmental study. This comparison revealed a high degree of congruency between the two sets of components. In the second study expert raters attempted to reliably translate job descriptions based on PMPQ data into the task-oriented functions of People, Data, and Things used by the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The results indicated that raters could not do this, thus highlighting the differences between worker- and task-oriented job analysis procedures. The advantages and disadvantages of principal components analysis and ideas for future lines of research are discussed.
A psychophysical study of performance ratings
(1983) Martin Domingo, Maria del Carmen; Thomas, Jay C.; Howell, William C.; Lane, David M.
ADHD severity as a predictor of cognitive task performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
(Elsevier, 2021) Mansour, Rosleen; Ward, Anthony R.; Lane, David M.; Loveland, Katherine A.; Aman, Michael G.; Jerger, Susan; Schachar, Russell J.; Pearson, Deborah A.
Background: In recent years, a number of studies have begun to explore the nature of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, we examined the relationship between both symptoms of ADHD and symptoms of ASD on cognitive task performance in a sample of higher-functioning children and adolescents with ASD. Participants completed cognitive tasks tapping aspects of attention, impulsivity/inhibition, and immediate memory. Aims: We hypothesized that children with ASD who had higher levels of ADHD symptom severity would be at higher risk for poorer sustained attention and selective attention, greater impulsivity/disinhibition, and weaker memory. Methods and procedures: The sample included 92 children (73 males) diagnosed with ASD (Mean Age = 9.41 years; Mean Full Scale IQ = 84.2). Outcomes and results: Using regression analyses, more severe ADHD symptomatology was found to be significantly related to weaker performance on tasks measuring attention, immediate memory, and response inhibition. In contrast, increasing severity of ASD symptomatology was not associated with higher risk of poorer performance on any of the cognitive tasks assessed. Conclusions and implications: These results suggest that children with ASD who have more severe ADHD symptoms are at higher risk for impairments in tasks assessing attention, immediate memory, and response inhibition—similar to ADHD-related impairments seen in the general pediatric population. As such, clinicians should assess various aspects of cognition in pediatric patients with ASD in order to facilitate optimal interventional and educational planning.
An Empirical Analysis of Internet Use on Smartphones: Characterizing Visit Patterns and User Differences
(2012-09-05) Tossell, Chad; Kortum, Philip; Byrne, Michael D.; Lane, David M.; Zhong, Lin
The original vision of ubiquitous computing was for computers to assist humans by providing subtle and fitting technologies in every environment. The iPhone and similar smartphones have provided continuous access to the internet to this end. In the current thesis, my goal was to characterize how the internet is used on smartphones to better understand what users do with technology away from the desktop. Naturalistic and longitudinal data were collected from iPhone users in the wild and analyzed to develop this understanding. Since there are two general ways to access the internet on smartphones—via native applications and a web browser—I describe usage patterns through each along with the influence of experience, the nature of the task and physical locations where smartphones were used on these patterns. The results reveal differences between technologies (the PC and the smartphone), platforms (native applications and the mobile browser), and users in how the internet was accessed. Findings indicate that longitudinal use of web browsers decreased sharply with time in favor of native application use, web page revisitation through browsers occurred very infrequently (approximately 25% of URLs are revisited by each user), bookmarks were used sparingly to access web content, physical location visitation followed patterns similar to virtual visitation on the internet, and Zipf distributions characterize mobile internet use. The web browser was not as central to smartphone use compared to the PC, but afforded certain types of activities such as searching and ad hoc browsing. In addition, users systematically differed from each other in how they accessed the internet suggesting different ways to support a wider spectrum of smartphone users.
Banner blindness: What searching users notice and do not notice on the World Wide Web
(1999) Benway, Jan Panero; Lane, David M.
Web designers attempt to draw attention to important links by making them distinctive. However, when users are asked to find specific items, they often overlook these distinctive banners. The irony of this phenomenon I call "banner blindness" is that the user who really wants to find the information the designer has highlighted is not likely to do so. In the experiments reported here, banner blindness was investigated under controlled conditions. Banners located higher on the page and therefore farther from other links were missed more often than banners located lower on the page and closer to the other links. Banners were missed more often when located on pages containing links to categories than when located on pages with links to specific items. Users rarely noticed banners when clicking the banner was not required to accomplish a task. Banner blindness occurred with several types of distinctive links---graphical banners that resembled advertisements, large plain-text banners and small plain-text banners that were very unlike advertisements. Increasing the perceptual grouping between the banner and the "menu" of hyperlinks helped users notice the banners only slightly more often. Adding animation to graphical banners did not help mitigate the effect. Users searching for specific information seem to focus exclusively on the link-rich areas of the page and do not notice distinctive items outside of that area. The last two experiments in this research focused on emphasizing one item within a menu of search-engine "hits." Three types of emphasis were used. Very large text caused a slight banner-blindness effect. Subtly large text had no effect at all. Highlighting one menu item by giving it a brightly-colored background did not cause banner blindness. In fact, it attracted the attention of users: users were more likely to select the highlighted item and did so more quickly. This type of color highlighting was most effective when it emphasized the first item in the menu. It was slightly less effective when it emphasized items in the middle of the menu.
Carry-over effects in space: Beyond single species studies and towards metacommunity dynamics
(2014-04-25) Van Allen, Benjamin G; Rudolf, Volker H. W.; Miller, Thomas E.; Dunham, Amy E.; Lane, David M.
The behavioral and physical traits of adults can be strongly influenced by conditions experienced during development. Consequently, variation in natal habitat quality across a landscape and through time can also lead to differences in the traits of adults. When individuals move across the landscape, this could create carry-over effects where differences in the natal habitat quality of colonizers influence population dynamics and species interactions in new habitats. I studied how these carry-over effects, which are known to alter individual traits and population dynamics, scale up to larger effects on community and metacommunity (multiple communities across a landscape connected by dispersing individuals) dynamics. I tested these questions on carry-over effects in a spatial context using a Tribolium spp. flour beetle system with habitat patches of flour. I generated carry-over effects by using flour types which predictably alter the traits of flour beetles who develop in them. The first chapter identified that carry-over effects which alter population dynamics occur in this system. It also discovered novel and powerful mechanisms for carry-over effects to influence population dynamics. The second chapter shows how carry-over effects and population density interact to affect dispersal decisions, which is important for understanding how carry-over effects will propagate across landscapes. The third chapter shows that carry-over effects can decisively alter competitive dynamics and outcomes, but that how may not be immediately predictable from their influence on single population dynamics. Finally, my fourth chapter manipulated whether carry-over effects occurred across multi-patch landscapes to test whether they influence species dynamics across a metacommunity. This final chapter shows that at the landscape scale, carry-over effects can have even more strong emergent effects. For example, carry-over effects increased population sizes across landscapes by ~10% while dramatically promoting different species under different conditions of dispersal and habitat arrangement. Thus, the influences of carry-over effects on population and community dynamics at the landscape level may be strong, but context dependent on other spatial processes. Further work to understand how landscape habitat patterns and dispersal shape the influence of carry-over effects on metacommunity dynamics could improve understanding of natural population and community dynamics.
Chess Performance under Time Pressure: Evidence for the Slow Processes in Speed Chess
(2013-09-16) Chang, Yu-Hsuan; Lane, David M.; Oswald, Frederick L.; Dannemiller, James L.
An influential theory of chess skill holds that expertise in chess is not due to greater depth of search by experts but, rather, to the ability to recognize familiar patterns of pieces. Although there is evidence that experts search deeper than non-experts, the data are not consistent. In this thesis, I propose “key-position theory” which states that only in a small number of key positions is it necessary to search deeply and it is these positions that experts search deeper than non-experts. Study 1 found, consistent with key-position theory, that the distribution of moves times is extremely skewed with some moves taking much longer than others. This pattern was more pronounced for the stronger players. Study 2 found that the errors made by weaker players involved less search than the errors made by stronger players. These findings suggest that search is an important component of chess expertise.
CHILVote: The design and assessment of an accessible audio voting system
(2013-09-16) Piner, Gillian E.; Byrne, Michael D.; Kortum, Philip; Lane, David M.; Wallach, Dan S.
The Help America Vote Act, passed into law in 2002, mandated that all polling places provide privacy and independence to all voters. Given this, many jurisdictions have been forced into making a choice between providing traditional voting methods (such as paper ballots) and offering newer electronic voting systems. Electronic voting machines have been seen as the solution to many usability and accessibility problems, but very little literature exists to indicate whether this is the case among speciﬁc populations such as disabled, elderly, and non-English speaking voters. An audio accessible voting interface for visually disabled voters (CHILVote) was designed using speciﬁcations from both the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and a largescale survey of blind individuals conducted by Piner and Byrne [in proceedings of The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting, pp. 1686-1690 (2011)]. CHILVote’s interface utilizes the given design guidelines and includes use of a male text-to-speech voice, a ﬂexible navigation structure, adjustable speed and volume, and an optional review section. Relatively low error rates (M=1.7%) and high SUS scores (M=89.5) among blind subjects are consistent with previous ﬁndings. Error rates and satisfaction are not signiﬁcantly different than those of sighted voters using both paper and DRE, and blind voters using a non-electronic interface. CHILVote signiﬁcantly reduced the time it takes for blind subjects to vote, from 25.2 minutes (VotePAD) to 17.1 minutes (CHILVote). This is an improvement, but still over 2.5 times slower than sighted subjects voting on an identical ballot. The integration of accessibility into mainstream technology often has beneﬁts beyond allowing more of the population access to a system. This research provides a comparison point and guidelines for future studies of accessibility solutions.
Choosing among alternatives with uncertain outcomes: effects of prior cuing and estimation requirements
(1982) Kerkar, Shanta P.; Howell, William C.; Watkins, Michael J.; Lane, David M.
The present study sought to clarify the influence of frequency and probability estimation on subsequent predictive choice performance. The experimental design involved a manipulation of quality of prior estimations via combinations of instructional set and response requirement. The results demonstrated that frequency judgments were consistently superior to probability judgments regardless of initial frequency or probability set. However, accuracy of predictive choices did not directly reflect the subjects’ estimation-performance. All experimental groups made better choices than a control group which had no set or estimation requirement; however, the experimental groups did not differ among themselves in choice performance. The latter finding suggests that estimation enhanced choice accuracy by cuing information that was accumulated in a similar fashion by all experimental groups: the record of event frequency. Some possible determinants of predictive choice for future practical and theoretical consideration are discussed.
Cognitive biases in the estimation of project completion time
(1992) Waggett, Jill Lynn; Lane, David M.
This dissertation reports the results of two experiments that examined potential explanations for the underestimation of project completion time. Experiment 1 examined whether estimators pay attention to important task characteristics when they estimate project completion time. Surprisingly, the majority of the sample ignored the intercommunication among group members required by the task when they estimated project completion time. No expert-novice differences were found. These results show a serious deficiency in subjects' awareness of the effect of this task characteristic on project completion time. Experiment 2 examined whether people underestimate project completion time because they misaggregate probabilistic time estimates for project components. Indeed, this experiment found that people use heuristics to combine probability distributions for serial and parallel tasks. These heuristics cause people to underestimate project completion time. However, the magnitude of these errors was small, compared to that of Experiment 1. These results suggest that although the misaggregation of time estimates may contribute to the underestimation of project completion time, it is probably not a primary cause of this bias. In conclusion, the primary explanation for the underestimation of project completion time appears to be that estimators of project completion time ignore important task characteristics that affect project completion time. To our knowledge, these studies are the first experimental examinations of cognitive biases in the estimation of project completion time. Conclusions that can be drawn from these studies provide interesting hypotheses for future research.
Cognitive organization in chess: Beyond chunking
(1989) Berger, Robert Christopher; Lane, David M.; Cooke, Nancy J.
Three experiments investigated cognitive organization in chess. The conventional view of perception in chess is the recognition-association model which emphasizes perceptual chunking as a basis for expertise. These experiments explored an alternative hypothesis that a higher level cognitive organizing process allows experts to integrate and perceive a position as a whole, rather than merely as a collection of perceptual chunks. In the first two experiments, subjects were presented with chess positions and high level descriptions of those positions either before or after position presentation. In both experiments, recall in the description-before condition was superior, supporting the importance of a higher level cognitive organization. The third experiment contrasted recall of positions presented by chunk with positions presented by pawn structure. Results showed recall was similar in the two conditions, again lending support to the idea that more than chunking is involved in the expert's perception and recall of a chess position.
Conceptions of effective teaching held by faculty and students from four academic divisions
(1979) Marques, Todd E.; Dorfman, Peter W.; Lane, David M.
The purpose of the study was to specify conceptions of "effective teaching" in terms conducive to the future development of a generally accepted, reliable, and valid system of instructional evaluation. Multiple regression was used to model individual conceptions held by male faculty (N=4) and male undergraduates (N=4) at Rice University. Faculty and student judges reviewed and rated profiles of 1 hypothetical instructors. The profiles consisted of a course subject matter designation and seven quantified cues referring to the instructors' performances on the following dimensions: lecture and/or presentation style (LECT), general rapport with students (RAPR), amount of information imparted in the course (INFO), arousal of student interest (AROU), clarity of course requirements and grading procedures (PROC), intellectual demand of the course (DEMD), and instructor's general knowledge of the field (KNOW). The judgmental policies of eight participants varied according to the subject matter designation. However, they did not vary in any normative or systematic manner. The non-configural raters (N=72) were included in a factorial analysis of group-related (i.e., Status X Discipline) differences in judgmental policy. The relative importance of the content (INFO, DEMD, KNOW) to style (LECT, RAPR, AROU, PROC) dimensions was greater for faculty judges. There was no evidence that policies are related to the raters' respective academic disciplines. Considering all raters, INFO received the highest average weighting, followed by AROU, LECT and KNOW, RIGR and RAPR, and PROC dimensions. Four clusters of raters were identified by HIER-GRP (Human Resources Laboratory, USAF). The composition of each cluster was heterogeneous in terms of the status and academic discipline of the members. The policies characterizing the cluster memberships varied in two respects: (1) in the dimensions weighted most heavily, and (2) in the number of dimensions receiving substantial weight (i.e., policy complexity). Modifications of conventional student rating scales were suggested in view of findings from the present study.
Development and evaluation of a spreadsheet debugging tool
(1991) Sampaio, Carlos Eduardo; Lane, David M.
In four experiments, the utility of a spreadsheet debugging tool was assessed as spreadsheet users interacted with experimental spreadsheets. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that although subjective reactions to the tools were favorable, the performance advantage offered by them was not statistically significant. Experiment 3 assessed the applicability of these tools' with respect to understanding a spreadsheet's structure and data flow. Again, although no performance advantage was shown with the use of the tools, subjective reactions to them were still favorable. Experiment 4 evaluated a more sophisticated version of the tool. The time needed to debug spreadsheets with this tool was shown to be significantly faster than the control condition. Subjective reactions continued to be very positive. Given the interactive nature of working with spreadsheets, the potential utility offered by these interactive tools will hopefully attract the attention of software developers for incorporation into future spreadsheet packages.
Dimensions of sound in auditory displays: The effects of redundant dimensions
(2005) Peres, S. Camille; Lane, David M.
Three experiments are presented comparing the effectiveness of several parameters of sound for the auditory presentation of statistical data. The dimensions of pitch, loudness, panning, and time were used alone and redundantly to map the values of a box plot to an auditory display. Temporal mappings resulted in better performance than mappings using pitch, panning, or loudness. In the first two experiments, there was no benefit when the mapping condition used two dimensions redundantly over mappings using one dimension. However, for the third experiment, there was a benefit of a redundant design when the dimensions of sound used were integral whereas there was no benefit when they were separable. This third experiment used a task more closely approximating a real-life application of auditory displays. Its results suggest that sonification can be used effectively in situations requiring the monitoring of more than one source of information.
Effectiveness of Simulation Training on Transfer of Statistical Concepts
(2000) Lane, David M.; Tang, Zhihua; National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education; Baywood Publishing Co., Inc
The effectiveness of simulations for teaching statistical concepts was compared to the effectiveness of a textbook. The variable Medium (simulation versus textbook) and Question specificity (Specific versus Nonspecific), were manipulated factorially. Question specificity was defined as follows: Subjects were presented with a scenario in which gumballs were sampled from an urn. Subjects in the “Specific” condition were given a specific question about the outcome of the sampling procedure to consider; subjects in the “Non-specific” condition were asked generally to consider what would happen. A no-treatment control was included. The subjects consisted of 115 college students. The dependent variable was performance on problems requiring subjects to apply what they learned to ill defined everyday problems. Subjects trained by simulation performed significantly better than those trained with a textbook. Subjects in the “Specific” condition performed better than those in the “Non-specific” condition, although the difference did not reach conventional levels of significance. These results support the increasing use of simulation in education and training.
Effects of causal explanations and conclusive evidence on subsequent beliefs
(1985) Kellam, Kathryn Laney; Anderson, Craig A.; Lane, David M.; Martin, Randi C.
An experiment to determine the effects of conclusive evidence on weakly-based beliefs was presented. The subjects explained a hypothetical relationship between two variables, and it was found that the subjects' opinions were systematically influenced as a result of their explanations. The subjects' judgments of conclusive evidence were not influenced by their earlier explanations, however. When the subjects' beliefs were measured after viewing the evidence, the following results emerged. The subjects' stated opinions were not affected by their earlier explanations, but were affected by the evidence that the subjects had viewed. However, when the subjects had to predict the outcome of an experiment designed to discover the true relationship between the variables of interest, there was a clear effect of the explanation manipulation and no effect of the actual evidence. In addition, a policy-capturing measure revealed a relationship between theory biases and the subjects' use of information.
Facial perception: A special case of visual perception?
(1988) Jensen, Dean G.; Lane, David M.
This study explored whether faces are perceived differently than other visual stimuli. Using the speeded-classification task, evidence of holistic processing was found for faces with normal organization but not for the same stimuli when the eyes, nose, and lips were not in their ordinary positions. Sets of interior features (eyebrows, eyes, nose, and lips) were subsequently tested for holistic processing. No evidence for holistic processing was found between eyebrow/eye and nose/lips groups or between the nose and the lips. However, it was found that decisions on the eyebrows could be made independently of the eyes but that decisions on the eyes could not be made independently of the eyebrows. This asymmetric-separable relationship persisted when the eyes and eyebrows were presented by themselves or in the context of a face, when they were presented upright or inverted, and when either a single eye/eyebrow or both eyes/eyebrows were presented. Decisions on inverted eyes were more difficult than decisions on upright eyes. No evidence of holistic processing was found for an eye/eyebrow presented in the context of non-facial stimuli. These results suggest that the asymmetric-separable relationship between the eyes and the eyebrows plays a role in the unique characteristics associated with the perception of faces.

Browsing by Author "Lane, David M."

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