Augmented Cognition: Amplification of Attention for Better Decision
Abstract
The primary purpose of this project was to investigate the underlying principles for the future development of systems capable of estimating the cognitive state of an operator, the demands of the task, and the relevant environmental conditions. The cognitive state is estimated using physiological as well as behavioral measures. Examples of the physiological measures include EEG, heart rate, plethysmography, and galvanic skin response. The behavioral measures include performance on the task, position, movements (especially eye movements), and vocal emissions. Environmental sensors would include microphones, thermometers, video cameras, and infrared cameras. In addition, the environmental information would include a database that is as complete as possible in terms of the terrain and situation information obtained from other intelligence sources. The authors developed a theoretical framework for a class of models that relate attention allocation to a measure of workload, and they demonstrated their ability to apply this framework to several tasks. Subsequently, they carried out several experiments to investigate the effectiveness of this approach within a visual search paradigm. The results suggest that significant improvements are possible, but only in situations in which the performance is truly limited by the abilities and the state of the human operator.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 25, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA431404
Entities
People
- Misha Pavel
Organizations
- Oregon Health & Science University