http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Cognitive-Psychology A listing of the most recently indexed works about Cognitive Psychology in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Cognitive-Psychology http://tc.eserver.org/35704.html http://tc.eserver.org/35704.html This article will cover a basic understanding of what the left and right brains are, and each of their traits. We’ll also go into how we, as creative people, can harness this understanding of the left and right brain to be more creative, as well as succeed in other work-related tasks. http://tc.eserver.org/35359.html http://tc.eserver.org/35359.html Discusses the cognitive shortcuts that may hinder technical communicators in empathizing with readers. Explores the issue of judging the severity of problems detected in a document evaluation. Demonstrates how cognitive shortcuts may affect technical communicators' capability to assess the likelihood and impact of reader problems. http://tc.eserver.org/35229.html http://tc.eserver.org/35229.html Given just a bit of information, we naturally crave more. Given a puzzle, we have to solve it. So, as interaction designers, how are we using this bit of insight into human behavior? http://tc.eserver.org/34991.html http://tc.eserver.org/34991.html With the rise of Web pages providing interactive support for problem-solving or providing large amounts of information on which a person is expected to act, designers and writers need to consider how a person interacts with increasingly complex information-rich environments and how they intend to use the information. This article examines some of the theory underlying why people make errors early in the problem-solving process when they form an intention. Since these errors are cognitively-based and occur before any physical action, it is harder to analyze their cause or incorporate changes to reduce them in a design. It examines factors which contribute to user errors and which designers and writers must consider to produce documents which reduce user errors in forming intentions. http://tc.eserver.org/34948.html http://tc.eserver.org/34948.html The human mind is geared to derive meaning out of what it perceives. And this attribute is so fundamental to it, that it may even be the most basic building block of human cognition. In our zest to dig out some meaning from everything, we even go to extreme lengths. There have been diviners, oracles, and witch-doctors who try to read meaning from chicken entrails, yarrow sticks, tea leaves, bird flights, etc, with the same seriousness that a doctor reads an x-ray, or a hot-air balloonist reads weather patterns. The famous metaphysical saying “there is no such thing as a coincidence” is something which rides on the underlying philosophy that says - there is always a meaning in everything - if you can find it. Understandably, this philosophy can be a highly devious tool in the hands of occultist quacks, and yet the motive behind it is a fundamental driving force of human cognition. http://tc.eserver.org/34957.html http://tc.eserver.org/34957.html Web advertisers resort to many unethical approaches (in my personal opinion) under the pretext of creativity. Let us learn about it. http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relatively little attention within the field. If our programs produce students who can think verbally but not visually, they risk producing writers who are visual technicians but are unable to move fluidly between and within modes of communication. This article examines the literature and pedagogical practices of visually oriented disciplines to identify strategies for helping students develop the ambidexterity of thought needed for the communication tasks of today's workplace. http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html Our classes have experienced higher quality outcomes when the Diversity Card Game was used to form teams than when the game was not used. Student feedback has also reinforced the value of the whole brain model through the card game. http://tc.eserver.org/34635.html http://tc.eserver.org/34635.html The task of writing clearly and simply has never been either clear or simple. In fact, it can be one of the most difficult of all writing tasks. Clear and simple writing is an art to which many aspire and few achieve. Even so, the understandability of web content depends upon clear and simple writing. Unclear or confusing writing is an accessibility barrier to all readers, but can be especially difficult for people with reading disorders or cognitive disabilities. http://tc.eserver.org/34648.html http://tc.eserver.org/34648.html When we as web designers create screens we are defi http://tc.eserver.org/34512.html http://tc.eserver.org/34512.html As human beings, we create conceptual models that enable us to understand the complex world around us. Hart believes that information designers should understand mental models as a tool for creating the best possible communications. http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html Our capacity for mimesis -- the capacity to represent experiences and states-of-affairs in iconic and indexical formats under strict bodily control -- molds later symbolic thought and action. Culture is not the initial product of language, language is the product of a particular manifestation of Mimetic Culture. http://tc.eserver.org/33571.html http://tc.eserver.org/33571.html Photo albums from previous presentations of Games To Explain Human Factors. http://tc.eserver.org/33511.html http://tc.eserver.org/33511.html Whether a collective mind forms in large-group writing in the workplace is the focus of this article originally given as the 1998 ABC Outstanding Researcher Lec ture. This article is based on a five-year ethnographic study that describes and analyzes a three-month group writing process that created a computer service-level agreement, involving a 20-person cross-functional core more than 100 other collab orators at a major corporation. The article discusses "collective form" in two senses: First, a document's evolving form or superstructure produced a collective schema that allowed the group through a process of equilibration (Piaget, 1981) to adapt outsider boilerplate into a more situated general model and then into a sit uated document. Second, architectural forms motivated and molded group activity in several ways. To combat group apathy, the leaders appropriated an in-demand meeting room for the project, positioning the project as high-status in the center of the workflow. Group leaders prominently displayed a task completion check-off chart that, in a downsizing environment, helped both to coordinate group activity and to encourage completion. http://tc.eserver.org/33432.html http://tc.eserver.org/33432.html We love stories, recognise patterns in fractions of a second and have a set of highly developed social behaviours. In "Persuasive Design" Mike will be running through a collection of these hard-wired influence points and exploring how they can be used in the design of products, interfaces and experiences. http://tc.eserver.org/33371.html http://tc.eserver.org/33371.html I’d personally love a computer experience which emphasized ‘flow’ and gradual, constant change. No longer would every little change pull your attention away from an important task. Instead, those Mail notifications, system messages and the like could gently change without you noticing, until you decided you wanted to actually look. http://tc.eserver.org/32494.html http://tc.eserver.org/32494.html Sometimes users find it difficult to perform tasks based on the information provided. Take a minute to understand why this could happen. http://tc.eserver.org/31127.html http://tc.eserver.org/31127.html We can't force people to look at the work we do, but if we want to make them happy, we need to provide them with the information they need in a manner that makes it easy for the top-down mechanisms to work efficiently. It's our job to help them observe, rather than just see. http://tc.eserver.org/31094.html http://tc.eserver.org/31094.html Jamie Owen explores how we can best utilize cues in our work by understanding how memory, cognitive psychology, and multimedia research affect how information is encoded and retrieved. http://tc.eserver.org/30496.html http://tc.eserver.org/30496.html Today's information developers are often confused by rapidly evolving technology and overwhelmed by the volumes of information they face each day. Although they might well feel that their mental faculties are taxed to the limit, research in cognitive psychology provides new strategies for coping in today's intellectually demanding environment. The purpose of this workshop is to give information developers insight into their intellectual strengths and to introduce strategies that can help them improve their intellectual performance. http://tc.eserver.org/30444.html http://tc.eserver.org/30444.html Satisficing describes the situation where people settle with a solution to a problem that is 'good enough.' http://tc.eserver.org/30060.html http://tc.eserver.org/30060.html Discursive activity in any setting (classrooms, coffee bars, laboratories, greenhouses, or the virtual settings of the Internet), occurs within a semiotic system, and it is useful to think of settings in this way. And, because I've be recently integrating an Activity Theory perspective into my teaching of qualitative research en methods, I wanted to describe the socially-situated organization of talk-in- context in Minneapolis's neighborhood coffee houses. I'm very pleased that Beth Sokolowski's drawings capture the typified activities indigenous to the settings and demonstrate what an important role the setting plays. http://tc.eserver.org/29806.html http://tc.eserver.org/29806.html A number of studies have found that writers produce text in bursts of language. That is, when creating a text, writers produce a few words, pause, produce a few more words, pause, and so on. Chenoweth and Hayes (2003) hypothesized that language bursts occur when writers translate ideas in to new language. This study tested this hypothesis against the following two alternative hypotheses: (a) Language bursts are caused by proposing new ideas rather than by translating ideas in to written language and (b) language bursts depend on the form of the input to the writing process rather than on the translation process. The study employed an editing task in which participants were required to translate a written language input. The alternative hypotheses led to contradictory predictions about writers' performance in this task. The study also explored the impact of working memory restrictions on task performance. http://tc.eserver.org/29042.html http://tc.eserver.org/29042.html Advocates of brain-based learning have argued that instructional methods, to be successful, must be based on an understanding of how the brain processes information. In the past most descriptions of neurocognitive function were largely speculative, relying on theoretical constructions of how we believed the brain to work. Recent advances in functional imaging Positron Emission Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging have, however, opened the brain to empirical study. This article will consider the potential importance of brain study for composition instruction, briefly describe functional imaging techniques, and review the findings of recent brain-mapping studies investigating the neurocognitive systems involved in language function. In short, understanding how language systems are organized in the brain represents the first step in our attempts to create brain-compatible instructional methods in the composition classroom. Following a review of the recent literature, the article will consider the possible implications of this information for pedagogical practice. http://tc.eserver.org/27669.html http://tc.eserver.org/27669.html Lisa Seeman intends to make a formal objection about WCAG 2.0's claim that they address all requirements for learning difficulties and cognitive limitations, as they do not have the success criteria to back up their claim. Moreover, there are known techniques that WCAG have not included, and people who do intend to cater for people with learning difficulties and cognitive limitations would benefit from knowing of these techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/27444.html http://tc.eserver.org/27444.html What you buy or 'buy into' influences how you think about something and how you represent that information in your mind is what cognitive scientists refer to as an 'internal representation'. Whether you buy usability services or not, at some point along the way I am sure you will or have encountered 'methodology madness', and maybe you don't even know it. http://tc.eserver.org/27419.html http://tc.eserver.org/27419.html Photosensitive epilepsy is a form of epilepsy that is triggered by visual stimuli, such as flickering or high contrast oscillating patterns, and it's believed that around 3% to 5% of people with epilepsy are susceptible to photosensitive material. Photosensitive epilepsy is usually triggered where the flicker rate is between 16Hz to 25Hz, although it's not uncommon for seizures to be triggered by flicker rates between 3Hz to 60Hz. The condition most commonly effects children, and is usually developed between the ages of 9 and 15 years, and most prevalent in females. http://tc.eserver.org/26570.html http://tc.eserver.org/26570.html To explore information behavior from a psychological perspective by relating information seeking to personality traits and study approaches. Fast surfing could be related to a surface study approach and emotionality, as well as to low openness to experience and low conscientiousness. Broad scanning was linked to extraversion, openness, and competitiveness, whereas deep diving was a search pattern typical of analytical students with a deep and strategic study approach. http://tc.eserver.org/26418.html http://tc.eserver.org/26418.html Over the last ten years, the increased availability of documents in digital form has contributed significantly to the immense volume of knowledge and information available to computer users. The World Wide Web has become the largest digital library available, with more than one billion unique indexable web pages. Yet, due to their dynamic nature, fast growth rate, and unstructured format, it is increasingly difficult to identify and retrieve valuable information from these documents. More importantly, the usefulness of an unstructured document is dependent upon the ease and efficiency with which the information is retrieved. In this paper, we define an unstructured document as a "general" document that is without a specific format e.g., plain text. Whereas, a document divided into sections or paragraph tags is referred to as semi-structured e.g., a formatted text document or a web page. http://tc.eserver.org/25776.html http://tc.eserver.org/25776.html Users now have precise expectations for the behavior of search. Designs that invoke this mental model but work differently are confusing. http://tc.eserver.org/25686.html http://tc.eserver.org/25686.html Experiments on the capacity of people to transmit information. http://tc.eserver.org/25088.html http://tc.eserver.org/25088.html With this paper... we are primarily concerned with the problems people with cognitive and learning difficulties might have when using the web and offering a few practical suggestions on how these problems might be addressed. http://tc.eserver.org/24790.html http://tc.eserver.org/24790.html The principles of graphic design 'work' for viewers for several reasons. One reason is that well-designed graphics perform significant information-processing functions for viewers. This workshop looks at individual differences in several dimensions of information-processing style (including visual/haptic,field independent/dependent, high/low detail analysis, high/low visual distractibility, and leveling/sharpening in visual memory). It then examines the ability of graphic designs to 'supplant' processing skills for viewers by either captializing on viewer strengths or compensating for their weaknesses. http://tc.eserver.org/24591.html http://tc.eserver.org/24591.html "It made me laugh, I love it," is not what you want to hear about an expensive TV commercial. Did it leave you with a powerful desire to obtain the benefit the product offers, so that you plan on purchasing it? Find out why silly TV commercials, that fail to communicate why the product is superior, are doomed to drain budgets and let the competition gain ground. http://tc.eserver.org/23710.html http://tc.eserver.org/23710.html Users of hypermedia systems, including the Web, are known to produce distinctive patterns depending upon what it is that they are trying to achieve with the medium. For example, someone who is seeking specific information produces a different browsing pattern than someone who is browsing generally. However, it is also known that people using hypermedia for similar purposes produce similar, but not identical, patterns. Such information would be useful for a browsing aid, since it would enable the better selection of links, for offering to the user, based upon what the user’s task is. This paper describes the architecture and training of a neural network system designed to recognise hypermedia browsing patterns in a prototype hypermedia environment. A further fuzzy-logic based system, which is used to record trends in browsing patterns, is then discussed in outline. Both systems have performed well in small-scale studies, with both real users and simulated-data. Further, both systems have proved robust to the potentially complex behaviour of users. These issues are discussed further. http://tc.eserver.org/23213.html http://tc.eserver.org/23213.html This article proposes that the optimal number of menu items cannot be reduced to the generalized 'Magic Seven, Plus or Minus Two' (7±2). The author proposes that instead, when planning a site information architecture, the two most important considerations are breadth versus depth and the display of information. http://tc.eserver.org/23215.html http://tc.eserver.org/23215.html Explores the psychology behind how users make navigational choices as they navigate through 'information spaces' and how information architects can use this information when crafting the navigational experience. http://tc.eserver.org/22917.html http://tc.eserver.org/22917.html To design and develop effective computer-based training screens, take advantage of visual psychological impact. Treated as a grid, the screen has high and low impact areas, Position the elements of the message to take advantage of these. Use visual cues to create planes and layers for emphasis. Decide on the content types which make up your message. These include concept, principle, process, procedure, and fact. Build screen sequences to make the purpose of the content clear to users. Add application Ievel questions to keep users involved. http://tc.eserver.org/22849.html http://tc.eserver.org/22849.html As documentation is more and more built directly into the interface, and as technical communicators move into areas of interface design and usability, it is important to have a theoretical framework within which to make decisions about what kind of information should be conveyed at any moment. http://tc.eserver.org/22755.html http://tc.eserver.org/22755.html Desde el principio de la humanidad, la correcta percepción del movimiento ha constituido una rutina importante de la vida cotidiana. También constituye un recurso importante en la visualización. http://tc.eserver.org/21465.html http://tc.eserver.org/21465.html We need a way to document and express mental models that is as simple and robust as personas for user profiles and scenarios for tasks. By laying out users' current mental models and a target mental model, we can clarify our thinking and communication about the user interface's objects, metaphors, and interaction. http://tc.eserver.org/21398.html http://tc.eserver.org/21398.html What do cognitive psychology and information architecture have in common? Actually there is a good deal of common ground between the two disciplines. Certainly, having a background in cognitive psychology supports the practice of information architecture, and it is precisely those interconnections and support that will be explored. http://tc.eserver.org/21291.html http://tc.eserver.org/21291.html There's a natural balance that can be mastered between both intensely imaginative, and passionately logical lines of thought. We need to seek out this synergy to be good at design. The surprising truth is that for designers everywhere, the scientific method can be an extremely powerful tool for finding and evangelizing your great ideas. http://tc.eserver.org/19482.html http://tc.eserver.org/19482.html This paper describes how our experience in striving to hire Information Designers led us to identify the very basic cognitive and humanistic traits that make up a successful technical communicator. It also shows how, once identified, such traits can be used to unveil hidden potentialities which can help turn a non expert candidate into a successful and gratified Information Designer and communicator. This paper focuses mainly on psychological traits, not on technical skills, that have been extensively discussed in a series of other papers. http://tc.eserver.org/19195.html http://tc.eserver.org/19195.html Whereas 7 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for structured writing and other methods for organizing information, 5 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for the number of participants needed in a usability test. Recent articles have looked at what Miller, who introduced the research on short-term memory, really meant regarding the 7 + or – 2 number (Doumont 2002; Kolbach 2002), and a similar re-examination is now a much-discussed topic regarding the viability of applying the number 5 to web usability testing. Two widely-publicized usability studies of Web users, one directed by Rolf Molich and the other by Jared Spool, are fueling the discussion. At the most recent meetings of CHI and UPA, panels addressed this specific topic, and the first question directed to Jakob Nielsen at the CHI session entitled 'Ask Jakob' was, How many users does it take? Knowing something about the research studies and the issues raised gives you the ammunition to decide where you stand. So, here’s a brief overview of what the controversy is based on, and, if you want to learn more, you can read the whole story in the original sources. http://tc.eserver.org/14215.html http://tc.eserver.org/14215.html One of the looming challenges educators face today is understanding how student diversity and uniqueness impacts the complex process of learning. Affective and conative factors are increasingly examined as we seek to understand how to teach and support the whole learner. The goal is to build theory that informs practice so that we may, as Martinez argues, move beyond “fuzzy, one-size-fi tsall [instructional] solutions” to instruction that is designed to match individual learning needs. Factors such as motivation, self-effi cacy, learning styles, and emotional intelligence have become increasingly common terms in educational research as we seek to defi ne affective and conative variables that impact the learning process as well as design of instruction. However, as with much of educational research, there are a vast number of complex, interrelated variables to consider and no one easy solution. http://tc.eserver.org/14153.html http://tc.eserver.org/14153.html Menu selection is emerging as an important mode of human/computer interaction. This book, the first entirely devoted to this important form of human/computer interaction, provides detailed theoretical and empirical information of interest to software designers and human/computer interaction specialists and researchers. A new theoretical approach to menu selection is taken by developing a psychological theory of cognitive control by the user. A comprehensive review of empirical research on menu selection is presented in an organized fashion to aid in the design and evaluation of systems. Finally, information is given on how to protype and evaluate menu selection systems using both performance data and user ratings. http://tc.eserver.org/13979.html http://tc.eserver.org/13979.html Although contemporary psychologists generally acknowledge the significance of affect in human experience, few attempts have been made to understand its role in cognitive processes. Important books on cognition barely mention the subject of emotion, feeling, or sentiment. Unlike the strictly cognitive and physiological psycholoúgists, social psychologists are deeply concerned with affect. These psychologists contend that to consider people dispassionate, information processing systems is a poor if not badly inaccurate model of the human being. A positivistic psychology has been too “cold' to carry the entire motivational burden. What is needed is some way to heat up cognition—a theory that unites the cognitively blind but arousing system of affect with the subtle cognitive apparatus. In an otherwise cold-blooded tradition of cognitive science and flow chart intelligence, the idea of hot cognition became a major humanizing counterstatement during the mid 1960s and early 1970s. http://tc.eserver.org/13940.html http://tc.eserver.org/13940.html People have a limited amount of cognitive resources. Coping with the increasing amount of information presented via a software interface strains a user’s cognitive resources. If a person has to use documentation, whether on-line or paper, additional cognitive resources are consumed, often overloading the user. Using several windows or multi-media elements can compound the problem. Unfortunately, as Wickens (1992) states, humans are unable to manage excessive cognitive strain and they respond by getting frustrated, committing errors, shedding tasks, or reverting to known methods. http://tc.eserver.org/13945.html http://tc.eserver.org/13945.html Design of information used for technical communication of complex products should consider how learnable that information is, and strive to deliver materials that are inherently learnable.The speed of information interchange and the demands of the workplace and school curricula require increasingly minimalist approaches to the material that is made available. People are frustrated by long learning times, and new users of software tools demand rapid absorption of tool capabilities. In addition, many readers of technical information are people for whom English is not their native language.Methods and practices that worked in the period when people were willing to commit to hours of study to understand a topic, or days of practice to master a tool, no longer work in a world based on ?internet time.? To assist our understanding of these trends in learning, this paper addresses three key areas related to learnability: proposing a definition of learnability, showing where learnability and usability intersect, and providing a basis for learnability based on some attributes of human beings. http://tc.eserver.org/13085.html http://tc.eserver.org/13085.html While more universities continue to develop HCI degrees and concentrations, things have not progressed this far in most computer science departments. Most computer science students still experience HCI as a single course that is frequently designed for juniors or seniors. Marilyn provides insight gained through ten years of teaching such a course to undergraduate computer science students at the University of Toronto. She began by accepting the reality of a single course, the diverse backgrounds of her students, and fact that many of these students may eventually be designing interfaces. http://tc.eserver.org/10292.html http://tc.eserver.org/10292.html Past studies of visual perception have produced a wide library of information on what forms of information can be most easily absorbed by the user. In this paper, we consolidate the literature to provide guidelines on the most effective steps in text engineering, with applications in both printed documentation and website design. http://tc.eserver.org/10271.html http://tc.eserver.org/10271.html There are a number of systematic relationships between basic measures of cognitive processing and measures of reading performance. The correlational study reported here demonstrates that these same relationships can be observed in the reading of hypertext. In addition, correlations among spatial processing abilities and performance with hypertext support the idea that spatial and relational processing play important roles in reading and using hypertext. http://tc.eserver.org/10094.html http://tc.eserver.org/10094.html Probably the most well-known article in the fields of usability, user interface design and user experience is Miller’s 1956 paper entitled 'The magical number seven, plus or minus two.' It is incredible how this article has lasted for over 40 years, and still seems to influence many design decisions. More recent, better research is available, but not being used.