Attention And Performance Xvii

Attention and Performance XVII

In 1966 the first meeting of the Association for the Study of Attention and Performance was held in the Netherlands to promote the emerging science of cognitive psychology. This volume is based on the most recent conference, held in Israel thirty years later. The focus of the conference was the interaction between theory and application. The organizers chose the specific topic, cognitive regulation of performance, because it is an area where contemporary theories of cognitive processes meet the everyday challenges posed by human interactions with complex systems. Present-day technological systems impose on the operator a variety of supervisory functions, such as input and output monitoring, allocation of cognitive resources, choice of strategies, and regulation of cognitive operations. A challenge for engineers and designers is to accommodate the cognitive requirements called for by these systems. The book is divided into four sections: the presentation and representation of information, cognitive regulation of acquisition and performance, consciousness and behavior, and special populations: aging and neurological disorders. Contributors Nicole D. Anderson, Moshe Bar, Lynn Bardell, Alice E. Barnes, Irving Biederman, Robert A. Bjork, Richard A. Block, Fergus I. M. Craik, Heiner Deubel, John Dunlosky, Ido Erev, Ronald Fisher, John M. Flach, Barry Goettl, Morris Goldsmith, Daniel Gopher, Lynn Hasher, Okihide Hikosaka, Larry L. Jacoby, Peter Kalocsai, Colleen Kelley, David E. Kieras, Roberta Klatzky, Asher Koriat, Arthur F. Kramer, Elisabetta Ladavas, John L. Larish, Susan J. Lederman, John Long, Cynthia P. May, Guiliana Mazzoni, Brian McElree, David Meyer, Satoru Miyauchi, Neville Moray, Louis Narens, Thomas O. Nelson, Raymond S. Nickerson, Lynne Reder, J. Wesley Regian, Ian Robertson, Wolfgang Schneider, Christian D. Schunn, Wayne Shebilske, Shinsuke Shimojo, Suresh Subramaniam, Tom N. Trainham, Jehoshua Tsal, Timothy A. Weber, Christopher Wickens, Rose T. Zacks, Dan Zakay

Cognitive Regulation of Performance

Attention

The study of attention in the laboratory has been crucial to understanding the mechanisms that support several different facets of attentional processing: Our ability to both divide attention among multiple tasks and stimuli, and selectively focus it on task-relevant information, while ignoring distracting task-irrelevant information, as well as how top-down and bottom-up factors influence the way that attention is directed within and across modalities. Equally important, however, is research that has attempted to scale up to the real world this empirical work on attention that has traditionally been well controlled by limited laboratory paradigms and phenomena. These types of basic and theoretically guided applied research on attention have benefited immeasurably from the work of Christopher Wickens. This book honors Wickens' many important contributions to the study of attention by bringing together researchers who examine real-world attentional problems and questions in light of attentional theory. The research fostered by Wickens' contributions will enrich not only our understanding of human performance in complex real-world systems, but also reveal the gaps on our knowledge of basic attentional processes.