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1. SUMMARY (Directors Overview)
Much of the Unit's theoretical work falls within the area that could loosely be called mainstream cognitive psychology. This includes work on memory, language, reading and reasoning, together with the breakdown in these functions in neuropsychological patients or patients suffering from psychiatric or emotional problems.
The concept of working memory, for example was originally developed within the laboratory using normal subjects to study the temporary storage of information in connection with other cognitive tasks. It has subsequently been extended to account for data from neuropsychological patients while the model is providing a useful framework for studying problems ranging from normal and dyslexic reading, to disruption of memory by unwanted sound and from memory for music to senile dementia. Much of the Unit's work in long-term memory 1s concerned with research outside the laboratory, although this often has theoretical implications. A good example of this is our research on eyewitness testimony which has produced results which have both practical implications for the questioning of witnesses, and theoretical implications for the nature of the underlying memory trace.
In our last progress report we stated an aim of increasing the Unit's work in the area of language and speech, and have succeeded in doing so. Prosody and the role of stress and timing in speech production is a particularly active area at present; work In this area has considerable Implications for computer-based speech processing, and collaborative work includes two projects funded by British Telecom and participation 1n an Alvey-sponsored project as part of a consortium that involves the Linguistics and Engineering departments of the University together with Acorn Computers and Standard Telephone and Cables.
Research on reading and writing continues to play an important role in the work of the Unit, and work on the breakdown of these skills In brain damaged patients is continuing to prove extremely fruitful. The principal strategy is still to attempt to relate the breakdown of function in patients to models of normal cognition. The emphasis has shifted somewhat from deep dyslexia which was the most extensively studied deficit described 1n the previous progress report to surface and phonological dyslexia, and to deficits of writing and spelling.
The Unit 1s continuing to play a very active role in the development of cognitive theory. Johnson-Laird's mental models approach is clearly likely to be highly influential, while the Unit continues to have an active interest in the application of artificial Intelligence to cognitive psychology. Unfortunately however this is one area that, despite its timeliness and importance, is unlikely to continue to flourish unless up-to-date computing facilities can be made available.
A major new development has been the attempt to apply the techniques of cognitive psychology to clinical problems of patients with psychiatric and emotional problems. The Unit has formed excellent links with NHS clinical colleagues, and is carrying out research on a range of populations, some involving patients such as depressives or suicide attempters, others using subsamples of the general population with milder emotional problems such as spider phobia, excessive worrying, or loneliness. Preliminary results indicate that this is a viable enterprise both logistically and scientifically. The speed with which this small group has established itself, and its success in interacting with both clinical and cognitive colleagues is very gratifying.
A central component of the Unit's work involves the application of cognitive psychology to the tackling of practical questions, an area which could loosely be termed Cognitive Ergonomics. The development of new computer-based technology raises many problems of relating the computer to the human user, and on a world-wide basis is certainly the major growth area of applied psychology. Having worked in this area for over a decade, the APU is in a good position both to attract outside support and to ensure that its findings reach the potential user.
Much of our work has been concerned with the development of computer-based office systems, where ease and efficiency of use depends crucially on taking account of the user's "mental model" of the system, which will almost certainly differ radically from the mental model of the expert computer scientist who created the system. Similar problems occur in the design of programming languages, in the organisation and structure of information retrieval systems such as Prestel and Viewdata, and in the design and development of expert systems.
Expert systems attempt to take the information possessed by an expert in a particular field, and embody this in a computer-based system. While the computer science techniques are advancing rapidly in this area, a crucial stumbling block is likely to be the problem of how to "harvest" an expert's knowledge, a question closely related to the psychological problem of exploring an individual's semantic memory. Research on this important but difficult topic is beginning, in collaboration with British Telecom, and with Unilever.
We are continuing to carry out work on more traditional methods of information transmission, with ongoing research concerned with the design of forms, tables, leaflets and instructions, all topics on which we are frequently asked for advice and assistance. A new development in this area is our attempt to move from the identification of problems in written material to an exploration of possible methods of improving the quality of writing so as to avoid the occurrence of such problems.
The project concerned with accidents has completed one cycle of research and is beginning a second. The phase that is virtually complete involved investigating claims that particular psychological variables were predictive of future accidents. Studies included work on bus drivers and pilots, and the measures included both field dependence, the capacity for perceiving a pattern against a jumbled background, and an attentional flexibility measure. Neither proved-adequate predictors. At a theoretical level two influential concepts, that of risk homeostasis, and that of perceptual style have been critically evaluated and related to the problem of accidents.
Another application of cognitive psychology is to the monitoring of human performance under stress. Both the main Unit and the Psychophysiology section continue to be concerned with the development of tools for assessing performance, and in recent years these have been applied, to the effects on performance of the fear induced in novice parachutists, and novice colloquium speakers, to the effects of breathing mixture on deep divers, to studies of noise, sleep deprivation and to the side-effects of drugs.
Research in the area of hearing has been very successful over the last three years. It may be recalled that work on the discrimination of sounds in noise gave rise to a detailed model of the auditory filter. This was then used both to produce improved audiometric techniques, and to design auditory warnings for specific environments. Guidelines for the design and evaluation of auditory warnings have been produced for the Civil Aviation Authority and warnings have been produced for the BAC 1-11, the Boeing 747 and for military helicopters. The work has been patented and has so far generated some £20,000. Current developments include the application of this research to the production of international standards for auditory warnings in hospitals.
A potentially extremely important development from this research is the spiral model of hearing. This involves the proposal of a spiral mechanism for the rapid and accurate categorisation of sound patterns. The model accounts for the characteristic features of musical perception, and has the further advantage that it offers an extremely promising design for a computer-based speech recognition system. The system has been patented with the help of the Industrial Liaison Group, and a venture capital company has agreed to fund its development. In view of the magnitude of the potential market for computer speech recognition, this could be an extremely important development theoretically, practically and financially.
A new area that is emerging at the Unit is that of research on music. Not only does this offer a useful preliminary test of the spiral processor model, but it also provides an interesting complement to the Unit's extensive interest in speech and language. Hence the parsing processes involved in language production find their counterpart in processes underlying musical improvization, while the similarities and differences between the perception of music and speech have interesting implications for the nature of the underlying perceptual system. Research on music also ties in neatly with work on memory, and research on timing and rhythm in motor performance.
Research on motor skill and action is however, rather less strong than three years ago, with the retirement of Poulton and the departure of McLeod to Oxford and Grudln to the U.S. computer industry. On the other hand, research on the disruption of movement by brain damage, and its subsequent recovery has flourished in the last three years, and seems likely to continue to be an important component of the Unit's work. Our interest in handwriting also continues and has reached a point at which' it is beginning to spin-off valuable applied results, particularly in the area of forensic science and signature verification. Collaborative work on children's learning of handwriting is a new departure which also seems promising.
An area which has shown signs of increasing in strength since the last progress report is that of visual perception, an area that has been greatly strengthened by the appointment of Watt who will combine a strong theoretical interest in vision with a concern for the applications of vision research to the area of driving and accidents. Work on visual attention continues to be strong while an interest in the relationship between perception and action is shared by a range of scientists who would not describe vision as their primary area of concern.
Application of psychological techniques to the study of photosensitive epilepsy has continued to be profitable, and has produced a very interesting further development. Those patterns that are most likely to induce photosensitive epilepsy are also most likely to induce illusory shimmering and colours in non-epileptic subjects, and to be most strongly associated with reports of eyestrain and headache. This relationship is being extensively explored and may have important implications not only for the understanding of eyestrain and headache, but also for the design of computer visual display units, fluorescent lighting, and even the optimal spacing of lines of print on a page.
The Psychophysiology Section has continued to be particularly active in research on sleep. An EEC supported project on the effects of traffic noise on sleep is nearing completion. It involved developing techniques for studying sleep in the home, and yielded the Interesting finding that for most of the subjects studied, the measures of performance proved to be a more sensitive indicator of the deleterious effect of noise on sleep than did physiological EEG measures, although a small subset of subjects does appear to show clear physiological response to outside noise. Traffic noise appears to prevent the sleep of such people reaching its normal depth, suggesting that in the long term their health may potentially be put at risk by the requirement to live under noisy conditions.
Research on shiftworkers also revealed interesting and potentially important effects. Night-shift workers' day-time sleep shows a clear decrement in both amount and quality. Psychological performance also shows steady deterioration over successive days, suggesting that shiftworkers may suffer from progressive sleep deprivation during a week on the night shift.
The section's work on developing portable tests has proved valuable with over 400 of their instruments being bought by establishments wishing to monitor performance. The section's own work on performance monitoring has ranged through the more-traditional areas of detecting the effects of drugs and investigating noise effects to a field study of the influence of human behaviour on the control of domestic heating, a study with obvious implications for energy conservation.
Developments in microprocessor technology have made possible several applications in relation to timing of responses and logging of analog data. This means that various forms of experimentation are now readily portable and reproducible at low cost. Examples Include Norris' tachistoscope program; Bloomfield's clocks for the BBC micro; Wilkins' eye-movement studies; Wing's studies on force and timing in motor control, and Nimmo-Smith's work on handwriting. The accumulation of expertise in applications of microprocessors is yielding increasing returns. It shows promise of meeting the extensive educational and clinical demand for cheap but sophisticated means of testing functions and monitoring progress.
In conclusion, the Unit continues to use a coherent and interconnected set of concepts and techniques to tackle a wide range of applied questions. This appears to be a fruitful strategy, both in yielding results of practical value and in testing, enriching and developing the underlying theories.
Other sections in the 1981-1984 report
2. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
3. COGNITIVE ERGONOMICS/APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
4. HEARING
5. MOTOR SKILL AND ACTION
6. VISUAL PERCEPTION
7. PSYCH0PHYSIOL0GY SECTION