The power of cognitive psychology lies in the promise of cognitive technology.
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The power of cognitive psychology lies in the promise of cognitive technology.
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Abstracts - Spring 2001
THEORETICAL AND RESEARCH ARTICLES 4 The Dragonfly Web Pages: Informal Science Education on the World Wide Web 14 The Union of Ethicality and Technology in Cognitive Rehabilitation 20 Evaluation of a Visual Collision Warning in Simulated Driving 29 Remediating Abstract Thinking and Flexibility of Thinking Following Head Injury 33 Bridging the Gap: Community Integration through Collaboration between a Community College and a Rehabilitation Program 38 Aging, Memory Assessment and Self-Reported Memory Function PRODUCT REVIEW 41 The InnovatorTM: A System for Improving Group Effectiveness BOOK REVIEW 45 A Review of: Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart The Dragonfly Web Pages: Informal Science Education on the World Wide Web The Dragonfly Web Pages provide informal science education on the Web, and are among the first educational Web sites guided by cognitive learning principles. The site consists of about 400 inter-linked pages composed of brief, illustrated expository text, interactive decision making games, side bars, links to resources, and instructions for investigators. Visitors make decisions and receive images, sound, and text tailored to their responses. Learning is conceptualized as a process of creating and refining mental representations. The Dragonfly Web Pages are based on six principles: 1) inquiry facilitates learning, 2) informal learning is intentional and goal directed, 3) learning is knowledge dependent, 4) intrinsic motivation is the basis of informal learning, 5) intuitions are educable, and 6) learning is context sensitive. Data from hit counters, visitor feedback, and an observational study provide preliminary evidence of effectiveness. The Dragonfly Web Pages holds promise as a model of informal education on the Web. However, further research is needed.
The Union of Ethicality and Technology in Cognitive Rehabilitation Myriad contributions of science have positively impacted the survival and recovery of individual patients in need of brain injury rehabilitation. Technology has empowered practitioners to facilitate patient recovery more quickly and empirically. However, the realities imposed by reimbursement structures within a managed care culture can sometimes cause the process to move TOO quickly. This article explores the concern that managed care urgency is deflecting our attention away from the individual patient as a human being. References to ethical principles and hierarchies of personhood are discussed in terms of rehabilitation as a humanistic endeavor. The argument is made that the way in which human functionality is defined is crucial to our battle against complacency and integral to our desire to promote what is right for each patient as an individual.
Evaluation of a Visual Collision Warning in Simulated Driving Two experiments evaluated the influence of a visual collision warning on overtaking manoeuvres in a simulated driving environment. In the first experiment we compared two conditions (triangle vs. no collision warning) when driving was the only task. In the second experiment we compared three conditions (triangle vs. stop vs. no collision warning) using a dual task that required participants to perform overtaking manoeuvres while computing mental additions. In both experiments participants benefited from collision warning. The results indicate that collision warning signals may improve driving and should be investigated in actual driving conditions.
Remediating Abstract Thinking and Flexibility of Thinking Following Head Injury Many brain injured patients suffer from deficits in executive functions. Their complaints may include difficulty thinking as quickly as they had premorbidly, thinking flexibly and abstractly, and readily generating ideas. Neuropsychological test measures which assess verbal abstraction (e.g., WAIS-III Similarities subtest) and capacity for flexible thinking or generating alternative hypotheses when problem solving (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sort, Category Test) may not necessarily reveal problems in these areas.
Bridging the Gap: Community Integration through Collaboration between a Community College and a Rehabilitation Program Current literature identifies community integration and psychosocial/behavioral adjustment as two key areas for assessing quality of life for persons with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Webb, Wrigley, Yoels, and Fine (1995) noted that "individuals with a positive self concept had the highest perceived quality of life." Kozloff (1987) found that individuals with TBI reported a decrease in their social relationships and a feeling of isolation from their peers. Wheman et al. (1993) identified interpersonal relationship problems as one of five categories for job separation for TBI individuals. Finally, Willer, Ottenbacher, and Coadf (1994) noted that community integration is a particular priority in treatment and habilitation of persons with TBI. Consequently, involvement in a community-based intervention which emphasizes building interpersonal and social interaction skills is essential for improved quality of life for TBI individuals.
Aging, Memory Assessment and Self-Reported Function Even though most older adults maintain a high level of functioning and independence in everyday life, increasing age is associated with poorer performance on many traditional memory tests. Three computerized memory tasks, a traditional list memory task, a more ecologically realistic name memory task, and an object recognition task were used to assess memory functioning within young and older adult samples. As well, self-reported memory functioning was assessed with the Memory Functioning Questionnaire (Gilewski & Zelinski, 1986; Gilewski, Zelinski, & Schaie, 1990) and a computerized Memory Readiness Questionnaire based upon Herrmann's Multimodal Model of Memory (Herrmann, Plude, Yoder, & Mullin, 1999). Thirty young adults and thirty older adults completed the memory battery. Young adults ranged in age from 16 through 27 years of age and older adults ranged in age from 60 through 87 years of age. The older adults resided independently in the community and were paid $10 for their participation. Young adults received course credit for their participation. The demographic characteristics of the young adults and older adults are provided in Table 1.
The InnovatorTM: A System for Improving Group Effectiveness Increasingly, organizations are turning to groups and teams to solve problems and make important decisions. While research suggests that groups/teams can be productive and effectively solve problems and make decisions (Dennis & Valacich, 1993; Kelley & Thibaut, 1968; Laughlin, VanderStoep, & Hollingshead, 1991; Tjosvold & Tjosvold, 1995), creating and empowering groups/teams alone does not ensure their success. Randall R. Kleinhesselink, Ph.D.
According to Gigerenzer, Todd and others, "The mind can have it both ways" (p. 365). This is clearly the mantra of the research program of the Center for Adaptive Behavior at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The book has 18 authors contributing to various chapters on bounded rationality and accurate decision making in deadline-driven real-world complexity. Beginning with an interdisciplinary team including psychologists, sociologists, economists, biologists and others, the group designed and tested a theory that it is possible to make optimal decisions rapidly, accurately and easily. Some parts of the theory can be seen as an extension of Herbert Simon's vision of the mind as being bounded; that the rationality of the mind is limited and that the structure of information in the environment determines what is rational. Other parts of the theory take us into the new territory of fast and frugal heuristics that increase our adaptive intelligence. As we enter into this new territory, we must first slay a dragon. The dragon is the "heuristics-and-biases" program the authors associate with Tversky and Kahneman (l974). The argument is made that they "tainted the idea of simple mental mechanisms by attaching them to the value-laden 'bias' term" and that, "heuristics were often invoked as the explanation when errors . . . were found in human reasoning" (p. 27).
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