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SUMMARY (Director's Overview)
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I regard the Applied Psychology Unit's primary role as providing a uridge between the experimental psychology laboratory and practical problems. If we are to fulfil this role we must be able to produce both theoretical work of a high order, and usable practical answers to immediate problems. While such a combination would not be possible in many subjects, the current position within psychology is such that the combination is not only possible but is a very fruitful one, a conclusion which is I think supported by our publications, and by the continuous stream of requests for advice and assistance that we receive.
The range of applications of our work is very wide, and in describing it there is a real danger that the diversity of practical applications will obscure the underlying theoretical concepts which link the many and varied applied studies. A relatively straightforward example of this is the unit's psychoacoustic work, where a single theoretical concept, namely that of an acoustic filter within the auditory system, motivates a range of applied questions including the design of auditory alarms for detectors of chemicals, warning systems for aircraft pilots, methods of audiometry and the design of hearing aids. A similar situation obtains in our work on cognitive psychology, but is less obvious since the underlying theoretical models are more complex, and frequently use somewhat different terminology to refer to broadly similar concepts. Hence Morton's logogen system which was devised to explain context effects in perceiving words has much in common with Baddeley & Hitch's working memory model which was originally designed to study the role of short-term memory in such tasks as reasoning, learning and comprehension. Both have similarities with the concepts developed by Marcel in order to explain his results on conscious and unconscious components in reading. All three approaches are closely related, and provide the basic concepts and techniques for tackling a range of problems which might at first glance appear to have very little in common. Hence the unit's work on arithmetic, on reading, on man-computer interaction, on the design and use of pictograms and on amnesia and dyslexia, all draw heavily on a single coherent underlying approach to human cognition.
Many of the new developments within the unit over the last 3/4 years have stemmed from the attempt to confront this underlying theoretical commitment to cognitive psychology with tractable applied problems. The most obvious application of cognitive psychology is within the area of education, and in the proposals I made in applying for the Directorship of the APU this is the area in which I suggested we should develop. The Board subsequently indicated that such a development was not appropriate, given the Council's general remit, and consequently this led to a rethinking of the possible fields of application. The result has been a concentration on the cognitive skills of adults rather than children, with a developing interest in the application of our skills and techniques to the problems of clinical psychology, and in particular neuropsychology.
In recent years, neuropsychological work has had an increasing impact on theoretical issues outside the clinical sphere. Hence work on patients with defective long- or short-term memory has played an important role in the development of general theories of memory, and information from patients with reading difficulties following brain damage has contributed substantially to our understanding of normal reading. We have over the last four years built up a very fruitful relationship with colleagues in neuropsychology in London, Glasgow, Paris and Oxford, which has led to profitable collaborative work. In the meantime we have been slowly building up our contact with Addenbrooke's hospital to a point at which we now have excellent links with the speech therapy department where we are carrying out work on aphasia and dyslexia and on evaluating methods of speech therapy, with the EEG department where Wilkins is doing collaborative work on photo¬sensitive and TV induced epilepsy, and with the department of neurology and neurosurgery where we have recently set up a project on closed head injury. Perhaps the most important feature of our recent developments is that we are extending our interests beyond the intensive study of a very few cases selected because they appear to have a very pure defect, to the consideration of much larger groups of less clearly defined patients. For example, head injured patients are unlikely to allow the precise testing of particular models which are provided by the rare "pure" amnesic or dyslexic. They do however present a practical problem of much more immediate significance, since they are vastly more numerous and present a substantial rehabilitation problem. They represent a theoretical challenge in requiring us to study very closely the relation¬ship between our laboratory based tests and the ability of the patient to cope in the outside world; I would be surprised if this did not, for example, lead to a re-evaluation of some of our views on human memory.
An area of cognitive psychology that continues to be a major APU interest is that of the design of information, how one should present information so as to make it most easily understood. It has the great advantage of confronting psycho Unguis tics, an area of considerable theoretical activity, but somewhat subject to the dictates of fashion, with a very down-to-earth practical problem such as that of attempting to help a person fill in a social security form correctly. The result has been a combination of steady theoretical development coupled with a capacity for providing advice and assistance across a very broad range of practical situations. The most recent development in this area is our work on man-computer interaction where current developments suggest that very shortly the general public will be increasingly encouraged to interact directly with computers.
As anticipated, the unit's work on perception has slightly declined. With the decrease in our involvement with work for the Royal Navy, the projects on computer-assisted detection, and on coloured displays have both been terminated. We are however continuing to do work on recognising people, while the recently approved project on accident causation includes a proposal to study perceptual style. The area of psychoacoustics is flourishing. We have developed new technical facilities and undertaken a
range of projects involving auditory warning systems, audiometric assess¬ment and evaluation of hearing aids. I would expect this aspect of the unit's work on perception to continue to develop. There might also be some advantage to strengthening the unit's work in the area of speech perception, an area of traditional strength at the APU which is perhaps less vigorous than formerly, and which would provide a very useful link between our psychoacoustic work and our more cognitive work on language.
A substantial involvement in the area of motor skills continues. In the past this work has focussed mainly on keyboard design and on tracking performance. Both of these continue although they form a less important component than previously, partly because the immediate practical problems that stimulated earlier work have now been solved or bypassed. Work is however continuing on the classical problem of combining two or more skilled tasks, and a new line of research on the skill of handwriting is proving fruitful at both a theoretical and applied level. It is perhaps worth noting the link between the unit's motor skill work and its work in other areas; hence the work on keyboards ties in rather well with studies of man-computer interaction, particularly where naive users are involved; work on dual task performance ties in very closely with some of the techniques and concepts developed in studying attention and working memory, while the study of handwriting is related to both speech production and memory through questions of mechanisms for maintaining sequential order.
Another of the unit's traditional interests which continue to flourish is work on the behaviour of drivers. A good deal is now known about the manual skills involved and we are now more concerned with the more cognitive perceptual and indeed social factors. This has led to an interest in driver attitudes as well as skills, and to an extension of the work of Brown's group beyond that of driving to an interest in accidents more generally, and in particular to the psychological factors preceding accidents. Additional resources have been given which will extend the unit's work in this general area.
For many years, the unit has had a very active interest in the influence of environmental stress on performance. Our involvement in this general area has continued but at a relatively low level over the past four years. This was partly because the group of people interested in stress was split between the main unit, the Psychophysiology Section and the outstation at Sussex (now the PCPU). The fact that we no longer have naval rating subjects also makes stress work more difficult to arrange; this in turn reflects less preoccupation with environmental stress by the Navy who sponsored most of our earlier work in this area. There are however signs of a revival of interest from both the Navy and the Array, and I would be happy to see us attempt a more systematic and theoretically based approach to the general problem of measuring human performance. I would like to see it moving in the direction of turning what is at present a craft into a technology which would be at least as important within the clinical field where the problems of the assessment of patients with a view to either prognosis or evaluation of rehabilitation techniques is likely to be increasingly important. There are also signs that theoretical interest in individual differences within the general field of cognitive psychology is growing, and this should help provide a more satisfactory theoretical basis for work on neuropsychological assessment. In the long term, it is clearly desirable that the technically sophisticated but theoretically sterile approach to individual differences which underlies the intelligence testing tradition be replaced or at least supplemented by an approach which is more concerned to elucidate the processes underlying differences in performance. I would see our work on the cognitive effects of stress and of brain damage as contributing to this general long-term aim.
The unit continues to be very actively involved in providing advice and occasionally assistance across a very wide range of problems. Our heaviest single involvement is with the Post Office for whom we continue to provide both ad hoc advice and a good deal of experimental work on both immediate and long-term problems. We tend to be contacted a good deal by the Press and television both about our own work and for advice on other issues. In general we welcome this since we regard part of our function as helping to provide a reasonably accurate channel of information between experimental psychology and the general public. Such a flow of information also brings us queries of a more substantial nature, some of which lead to experiments and ultimately research projects. We regard this flow of practical problems as a crucial element in our particular approach to psychology.
The Psychophysiology Section has just passed through a rather disrupting period with the installation of a new computer and the long delayed extension and reorganisation of available space. During this period collaborative work with various outside bodies on measuring performance under stress continued, as did the development of portable apparatus for performance monitoring. The new facilities are now fully operational, and work is in full swing on a series of projects on sleep. The most extensive of these is a CEC project in collaboration with a number of European laboratories which is aimed at monitoring sleep in the home and relating both quality of sleep and performance next morning to environmental noise levels.
A study on the verbal ability of deaf school leavers carried out by Conrad and his group at Oxford has now been completed. Virtually the entire population of such children were tested on a range of cognitive tasks, and has been analysed; some preliminary results have been already published, but the main publication will be in the form of a monograph which is nearing completion. It seems likely that the results obtained will be of considerable significance both for the light that they will throw on the current systems of educating the deaf, and also for their theoretical implications for the understanding of normal cognition.