Thierry Morineau

The emergence of the contextual role of the e-book in cognitive processes through an ecological and functional analysis

An electronic book is a new means of presenting text, allowing downloading of documents and multiple readings on a portable computer. On the basis of an ecological and functional analysis of paper and electronic books with the Abstraction Hierarchy method, we tested the ability of a mobile e-book device to be an external memory trigger, assisting the recall of information content through its presence as a contextual index. In contrast to the classical experimental approach for research on reading and comprehension, we consider screen and paper as relevant cognitive tools per se. Specifically, we compare a book on a pocket computer and a paper book. Hypothesising that the physical reading support could serve as a contextual cue for memory, we experimented with groups of participants who could or could not see the support during recall. We measured the reading time, and the material later recalled was classified according to its cognitive nature. After recall, participants had to assess the sensory-motor properties of the reading support with the Osgood semantic differential and to note the humour level of the text. Results show that the e-book presence hinders recall of assimilated information whilst the presence of the paper support tends to facilitate it. Finally, we observed some correlation between sensory-motor assessment of the support and certain aspects of text cognitive processing: humour scoring, reading time and recall performance. These results lead us to conclude there is a critical relation between the sensory-motor experience of the support and the cognitive processing of the text content. This relationship might explain the positive or negative contextual effect of the support on recall performance.

Decision Making During Preoperative Surgical Planning

Objective: This study analyzes decision making during preoperative surgical planning through two cognitive indicators: conflict and cognitive control. Background: Planning is a critical stage in naturalistic decision making, and there is some evidence suggesting that this activity depends on the level of expertise and the demands of the task. The specificity of surgery resides in the necessity to cope with (potential) conflicts between the purpose of the surgical intervention and the biological laws governing the patients body. Method: Six neurosurgeons (two board-certified neurosurgeons, two chief residents, and two residents) described the operative procedure envisaged on nine surgical cases of increasing surgical complexity. A detailed analysis of one surgical case described by one expert was performed. Moreover, we measured the number of conflicts and controls reported by each surgeon. Results: Two experts were the only ones for which the report of conflicts increased with surgical complexity (respectively, 75% and 73% of the conflict variance predicted by complexity). The two experts significantly activated a higher proportion of knowledge-based control (respectively, 43% and 38%) than did intermediates and residents. The residents significantly activated more motor skill—based controls (respectively, 40% and 44%) than did intermediates and experts. Conclusion: It seems that expert surgical decision making to cope with task demands is significantly associated with conflict monitoring. Knowledge-based control to regulate conflict is mainly produced by experts. Application: Conflicts and controls analyzed through verbal reports can be used as relevant indicators to highlight critical moments in decision making that potentially require assistance from information systems.

Request Solicitation and Semantic Evocation of Freedom: An Evaluation in a Computer-Mediated Communication Context

The “But you are free of …” technique is a compliance procedure which solicits someone to comply with a request by simply telling him that he is free to accept or to refuse the request. This semantic evocation leads to increased compliance with the request. A new evaluation of the generality of this technique was tested in an experiment in which subjects received an anonymous electronic mail which asked them to consult the site of a humanitarian association for children. Analysis showed that, when the semantic evocation of freedom is included in the message, a higher compliance rate was observed than in a situation in which this evocation was omitted.

Turing machine as an ecological model for task analysis

A new model for task analysis is presented based on the ecological approach initiated by cognitive work analysis (CWA). This model aims to improve the implementation of the theoretical principles involved in the ecological approach of a work system. More precisely, under current CWA, task analysis uses Rasmussens ladder. However, this approach fails to highlight the contextual constraints on the task. This model is based on the Turing machine formalism and takes into account the variety of situations that can be experienced by an agent and especially degraded situations of work. Moreover, it can model the concept of affordance-specifying information. It is shown that this formalism can be applied to a prototypical task, such as opening a door.

How the psychological theory of action identification can offer new advances for research in cognitive engineering

We present the psychological theory of action identification as a framework for a more in-depth understanding of a human operators cognitive activity in the scope of cognitive engineering. A comparison of theoretical models and findings shows that both frameworks are founded on a similar theory of cognitive control based on an ontological viewpoint of means–ends relationships with the proposal that an individual mentally ‘navigates’ or ‘moves’ through a hierarchical arrangement of these relationships. However, whilst cognitive engineering begins the analysis from a viewpoint on affordances coming from the external work domain, the action identification theory starts from a viewpoint on action identities internally attributed to actions by individuals. We show that the conceptual articulation of these two approaches leads to confirming qualitative findings on an agents cognitive activity and to proposing general cognitive principles that would explain a single agents mental navigation through the abstraction hierarchy.

A cognitive engineering framework for the specification of information requirements in medical imaging: application in image-guided neurosurgery.

PurposeThis study proposes a framework coming from cognitive engineering, which makes it possible to define what information content has to be displayed or emphasised from medical imaging, for assisting clinicians according to their level of expertise in the domain.MethodWe designed a rating scale to assess visualisation systems in image-guided neurosurgery with respect to the depiction of the neurosurgical work domain. This rating scale was based on a neurosurgical work domain analysis. This scale has been used to evaluate visualisation modes among neurosurgeons, residents and engineers. We asked five neurosurgeons, ten medical residents and ten engineers to rate two visualisation modes from the same data (2D MR image vs. 3D computerised image). With this method, the amount of abstract and concrete work domain information displayed by each visualisation mode can be measured.ResultsA global difference in quantities of perceived information between both images was observed. Surgeons and medical residents perceived significantly more information than engineers for both images. Unlike surgeons, however, the amount of information perceived by residents and engineers significantly decreased as information abstraction increased.ConclusionsWe demonstrated the possibility of measuring the amount of work domain information displayed by different visualisation modes of medical imaging according to different user profiles. Engineers in charge of the design of medical image-guided surgical systems did not perceive the same set of information as surgeons or even medical residents. This framework can constitute a user-oriented approach to evaluate the amount of perceived information from image-guided surgical systems and support their design from a cognitive engineering point of view.

Experimental evaluation of a tide prediction display based on the ecological interface design framework

This study evaluates whether the approach of ecological interface design (EID) can be applied to natural systems. Whereas the EID has proved its worth in a number of studies done at interfaces for complex artificial systems, its application to natural systems is just emerging. A display was designed for tide predictions. This new tidal display, referred to as the ecological document (ED), was evaluated against a classical table format and a commercially available graphical display, to assess the cognitive contribution of the ED to user performance for maritime novices and experts. The results are that the ED leads to less misreading, shorter response times, and a subjective preference among novices and experts. In particular, response times to questions concerning abstract functions of the domain decrease with the use of the ED. Thus, a document reflecting the domain can significantly improve information retrieval, and in particular cognitive processing on abstract functions.

Work domain constraints for modelling surgical performance.

PurposeThree main approaches can be identified for modelling surgical performance: a competency-based approach, a task-based approach, both largely explored in the literature, and a less known work domain-based approach. The work domain-based approach first describes the work domain properties that constrain the agent’s actions and shape the performance. This paper presents a work domain-based approach for modelling performance during cervical spine surgery, based on the idea that anatomical structures delineate the surgical performance. This model was evaluated through an analysis of junior and senior surgeons’ actions.MethodTwenty-four cervical spine surgeries performed by two junior and two senior surgeons were recorded in real time by an expert surgeon. According to a work domain-based model describing an optimal progression through anatomical structures, the degree of adjustment of each surgical procedure to a statistical polynomial function was assessed.ResultsEach surgical procedure showed a significant suitability with the model and regression coefficient values around 0.9. However, the surgeries performed by senior surgeons fitted this model significantly better than those performed by junior surgeons. Analysis of the relative frequencies of actions on anatomical structures showed that some specific anatomical structures discriminate senior from junior performances.ConclusionThe work domain-based modelling approach can provide an overall statistical indicator of surgical performance, but in particular, it can highlight specific points of interest among anatomical structures that the surgeons dwelled on according to their level of expertise.

An extended version of the Rasmussen’s Dynamic Safety Model for measuring multitasking behaviors during medical emergency

An extended version of the Rasmussen’s Dynamic Safety Model was implemented to empirically index team activity during a medical emergency. The video recordings of two emergency training sessions during the simulation of an adverse event with two paramedical teams were analyzed with a coding scheme based on the model. We show that individual’s allocation of perceptions and actions to multiple work constraints (i.e., patient’s state monitoring, information processing with team, and equipment management) can be dynamically tracked.

Modeling Abstraction Hierarchy Levels of the Cyber Attacks Using Random Process

Aspects of human behavior in cyber security allow more natural security to the user. This research focuses the appearance of anticipating cyber threats and their abstraction hierarchy levels on the mental picture levels of human. The study concerns the modeling of the behaviors of mental states of an individual under cyber attacks. The mental state of agents being not observable, we propose a non-stationary hidden Markov chain approach to model the agent mental behaviors. A renewal process based on a nonparametric estimation is also considered to investigate the spending time in a given mental state. In these approaches, the effects of the complexity of the cyber attacks are taken into account in the models.