Developing and testing a dynamic model of the proximal and distal motivational processes responsible for the regulation of task-directed effort. The project will provide benefits for society, both in terms of its contribution to scientific knowledge and understanding, and potential applications for end users. The question of how people prioritise tasks, set goals, and apply effort is of fundamental importance for understanding human behaviour. Society benefits from basic research into this quest ....Developing and testing a dynamic model of the proximal and distal motivational processes responsible for the regulation of task-directed effort. The project will provide benefits for society, both in terms of its contribution to scientific knowledge and understanding, and potential applications for end users. The question of how people prioritise tasks, set goals, and apply effort is of fundamental importance for understanding human behaviour. Society benefits from basic research into this question, because it allows us to understand the sources of (and limits to) human resilience. The results have wide application in military, industrial and commercial settings. Examples include the development of tools for training people more effectively, managing their workload, and improving their performance.Read moreRead less
How attention and memory for past events interact in determining performance in an air traffic control conflict detection task. This project addresses the priority of safeguarding Australian transportation systems because it concerns failures of attention or memory as sources of human error in aviation. Outcomes will inform the development of training exercises aimed at improving attention management skills critical to safe performance. The research will strengthen Australia's reputation for cut ....How attention and memory for past events interact in determining performance in an air traffic control conflict detection task. This project addresses the priority of safeguarding Australian transportation systems because it concerns failures of attention or memory as sources of human error in aviation. Outcomes will inform the development of training exercises aimed at improving attention management skills critical to safe performance. The research will strengthen Australia's reputation for cutting edge research that extends basic science to applied domains, as this project is one of few world-wide investigating attention and memory processes in multi-item display tasks. More broadly, the project will provide insight into why individuals can make errors when basing decisions on past experience. Read moreRead less
A Scalable Theory of Behavior Composition for Practical Engineering Models of Human Performance. Minimizing human error and maximizing human performance is a major design goal in safety critical systems. The development of methods for affordable human performance modeling has widespread applicability for evaluating user-system interfaces. The compositional method explored here has been shown to make accurate predictions reduce model development time by an order of magnitude. Large safety critica ....A Scalable Theory of Behavior Composition for Practical Engineering Models of Human Performance. Minimizing human error and maximizing human performance is a major design goal in safety critical systems. The development of methods for affordable human performance modeling has widespread applicability for evaluating user-system interfaces. The compositional method explored here has been shown to make accurate predictions reduce model development time by an order of magnitude. Large safety critical applications, such as military or air traffic control systems, would benefit greatly. The proposed work tests whether the compositional methods will scale to more complex domains. The work will be coordinated with Australian industry, academia, and government research efforts.Read moreRead less
A Method for Analysis of Complexity in Cognitive Processes: Applications to Prediction of Industrial Workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in human and animal cognition. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It will have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and a ....A Method for Analysis of Complexity in Cognitive Processes: Applications to Prediction of Industrial Workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in human and animal cognition. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It will have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and appropriate pedagogies determined. It also has application to human factors, especially industrial performance and decision making. It will advance on currrent methods because it enables workload to be analysed and predicted, so that it can be factored into job and system design. Read moreRead less
A method for analysis of cognitive complexity: Applications to reasoning, learning and to industrial workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in humans and animals. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It has application to human factors, especially in aviation and command and control tasks generally. It will adv ....A method for analysis of cognitive complexity: Applications to reasoning, learning and to industrial workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in humans and animals. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It has application to human factors, especially in aviation and command and control tasks generally. It will advance on currrent methods because it enables workload to be analysed and predicted, so that it can be factored into job and system design. It will also have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and appropriate pedagogies determined.Read moreRead less