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1. SUMMARY (Director's Overview)
The Unit attempts to bridge the gap between pure and applied psychology. The theoretical concepts and experimental techniques developed through pure research often allow us to view applied problems in new and productive ways. At the same time, the attempt to apply theoretical concepts outside the laboratory highlights the strengths and limitations of such concepts and in many cases leads to their further development and elaboration. We are fortunate in that cognitive psychology is at a stage of development where such an interaction between theoretical and applied research is both tractable and fruitful.
Over the past three years we have tackled a wide range of applied questions ranging from auditory warnings on the flight deck of civil aircraft to analysis of the job of the deep sea diver, and from the reading problems of brain-damaged patients to the speed of reaction of test cricketers. What ties together these apparently unrelated problems is a relatively limited set of underlying theoretical concepts. In general, the theoretical style of the Unit is to assume that cognitive behaviour reflects the operation of a number of subsystems, and to use experimentation to analyse such systems into component parts. Such an approach lends itself to clinical application in the area of neuropsychology, and over the last three years this has been one of the areas of greatest activity. Our approach however has been to use data from the breakdown of cognitive function in the brain damaged patient in order to understand normal cognition, and vice versa. We are not therefore a neuropsychology unit, we are an experimental psychology unit using and influenced by neuropsychological evidence. This will I hope become evident in the account which follows.
A characteristic of our work over the last three years has been an increased involvement in field experiments of a more long-term and ambitious nature than has previously been common at the A.P.U. Examples of this are the work on evaluating techniques of speech therapy, the project on individual differences in accident liability, the work on memory problems following closed head injury and the very extensive series of experiments on man-computer interaction. Most of these projects are still in progress, and it is in the nature of such long-term field research that results tend not to be obvious until the end of the project. However it is already clear that such research is providing a necessary and productive supplement to the Unit's more traditional laboratory-based approach to applied research. While experimental work under controlled conditions will remain the backbone of the Unit's approach, I would see field work as an essential part of the future work of the Unit.
In general, the last three years has involved a development and expansion of existing work rather than a radical change in direction. The Unit's work on audition provides a good illustration of this. The theoretical analysis of auditory masking in terms of an auditory filter has been refined mathematically and extended to include a wider population experimentally. Two major applications of the model have been developed: (a) the design and evaluation of auditory warning systems for the flight decks of civil aircraft, and (b) the audiometric assessment of patients. In this latter area, the preliminary work relating filter shape to age is nearing completion and collaborative clinical research (with the Institute for Research into Hearing and Deafness) is about to begin.
Visual attention is an area of current theoretical interest which is beginning to influence our applied research in clinical contexts and in connection with accident causation. Also in a clinical context is the work on photosensitive epilepsy: in addition to practical implications, for example in connection with T.V. induced epilepsy, attempts to locate the triggering mechanisms within the central nervous system are proving highly successful, while work on Che spread of excitation within the cortex appears to have considerable promise in connection with a general model of epilepsy.
The study of perceptual motor skills combines a focus on precise models of the underlying processes with a determination to apply such models outside the laboratory. Examples are the theoretical and applied studies on handwriting and the successful application of laboratory-based theory to an analysis of the highly developed skills of the test match cricketer. The area of greatest current development however is probably in the study of movement patterns in clinical populations. The neuropsychology of movement is a relatively unexplored area, and one to which we hope to devote an increasing amount of effort over the next few years.
In the area of stress, research on performance has largely consolidated previous work, using both portable test equipment and paper and pencil tests to look at a broad range of stresses. A major de-development over the last few years has been in the Unit's increasingly sophisticated techniques for physiological monitoring in the field. The Psychophysiology Section's work on noise and sleep in the home is an example of this, as is the work on telephone switchboard operators and the project on trainee parachutists.
The psychology of memory continues to be an area of vigorous development within the Unit. In the area of short-term and working memory, previous conceptual developments have been expanded and applied to new tasks such as reading and arithmetic. In long-term memory the major trend over the last few years has been an attempt to test, in the field, the generality of the extensive laboratory-based research on human learning and memory done over the last ten years. Examples of this are the head injury and memory project, work evaluating saturation advertising and work on memory lapses in everyday life. Existing theories of memory tend to be ill equipped to cope with the richness of this type of data, and one of the most recent developments within the Unit has been a growing concern to develop theories of long-term memory which are capable of reflecting this degree of complexity.
The area which has probably seen the most vigorous activity over the past three years has been the study of reading. In particular, there has been a great deal of interest in relating the patterns of reading disorders resulting from neurological injury in adults to the dimensions and variables which affect the reading performance of normal adults. Deep dyslexia, a syndrome which appears to be particularly pertinent to current models of normal reading, was the subject of an M.R.C. sponsored conference held in Cambridge, and a book in which six of the chapters were written by members of the A.P.U. Three other syndromes of acquired dyslexia have been receiving increased attention in the last year or two, and seem likely to prove theoretically very productive. I would see this line of research continuing and broadening to include an increased involvement in the study of aphasia, a topic addressed mainly over the past three years by a successful applied clinical project to evaluate speech therapy techniques for facilitating word finding in aphasic patients.
Work on design of information and factors influencing Che readability of forms and tables has continued to flourish. The major focus now is to communicate our results to the enormously wide range of potential users, in a way that allows them to implement recommendations effectively. In this respect, it is obviously much more desirable to formulate principles that will assist good initial presentation of material rather than simply provide techniques for identifying the flaws in what has already been produced. We are therefore starting a programme of research on the factors involved in good writing.
The most active current area of applied research in the Unit has been in the field of man-computer interaction, where we can cope with but a small proportion of the requests for research that we receive. Again we have been concerned to develop general principles designed to allow a user to tackle this important area himself, rather than solutions to specific limited problems. While we are clearly making progress, it is obvious that this area is sufficiently complex and important to justify substantial future Unit involvement.
The project on individual differences in accident liability is now well advanced. A battery of tests of both perceptual and attentional performance has been developed and is currently being used in a prospective study of accidents in London Transport bus drivers. At the same time the Transport and Road Research Laboratory and the R.A.F. are collaborating by testing samples of accident-involved motorists and trainee pilots. While we can obviously not at this stage predict whether the tests will prove appropriate, I think we have demonstrated that such an approach is both feasible and sufficiently attractive to outside bodies to induce them to commit considerable assistance to the project. I would therefore like to suggest that the Board should approve the designation of this area of research as an established feature of the Unit's programme, thereby allowing its continued development.
The main emphasis of work at the Psychophysiology Section has been on the study of sleep in the home, in response to an increase in extramural support for this topic. It has been shown that traffic noise can have a major effect on the sleep of people living near arterial roads, an effect which is reflected in their test performance next morning, but which can be alleviated when noise level is reduced by double glazing. Other work has concerned the sleep of shift workers and their subsequent performance. Work on portable apparatus for assessing deterioration in skill has continued, with the development of two new tasks, vigilance and short-term memory, while performance has been studied under a range of stressors, including noise, anaesthetics, antihistamines and industrial pollutants.
Work at the Oxford Outstation on the cognitive abilities of the deaf is nearing completion. A major monograph on the project has been published and extremely well reviewed. A study of the deaf children of deaf parents is nearing completion. It tests the hypothesis that extensive use of sign language during the child's early years will allow more normal cognitive development than occurs when deaf children are exposed only to spoken language.
The Unit was invited to host the ninth meeting of the International Association for the Study of Attention and Performance — the first to be held in Britain. We departed from the normal procedure of a single organiser, spreading the load of both organising the meeting and editing the proceedings widely throughout the Unit. This seems to have proved a successful policy; comments on the organisation were uniformly positive, while the proceedings (120 U) are on schedule to appear in half the time taken by recent volumes.
The Unit continues to play a very active consultant role, responding to an average of 45 requests per month for information and assistance. A substantial minority of these are requests for advice or information from the Press, radio or T.V., and while we are often able to do no more than suggest an appropriate further contact, we do regard our relationship with the general public via the media as being of some importance. Presenting psychology in a responsible but stimulating way is part of our job, and, in addition to writing articles and contributions to semi-popular books. Unit members have recently been involved in at least three radio and eight television programmes, the latter comprising mainly popular science programmes of the "Horizon" type.
The Unit continues to provide advice and assistance to a wide range of outside organisations and individuals on issues where the techniques of applied psychology are relevant. This often leads to a continued involvement in either an advisory or a collaborative capacity, something which we welcome because it allows us to extend the scope of our work in new areas, while tending to keep our theoretical feet firmly on the ground. I would see such activity continuing to be an important component of the Unit's work.
A more detailed account of the Unit's research follows, together with a concluding comment on an overall evaluation of our current progress and suggested directions for future development.