A software system is an aggregate of communicating modules, and there are several different types of communication among these modules (direct, indirect, and global). Therefore, understanding the interfaces among these modules can characterize the system and are a major factor in the system's complexity. These interfaces could possibly also show and predict inadequacies in the reliability and maintenance of a system. Interfaces are defined early in the development life cycle at a detailed or high level design stage. Knowing that these interfaces exist and their structure leads us to measure them for an indication of the designed interface complexity. This designed interface complexity can then be utilized for software quality assurance by allowing users to choose from among several designs. With data provided by an Ada software developer, the interface complexity metrics correlated with established metrics, but also found complex interfaces that established metrics missed. / Ph. D.

Research has shown that many antihistamines produce sedative effects as well as impair psychomotor performance. Performance testing of antihistamines, however, has not produced reliable evidence that there are behavioral effects at therapeutic dose levels. Therefore, the objective of this research was to determine whether a complex cognitive and motor task (memory search and tracking combination) showed a performance deterioration under the influence of two antihistamines (benadry| and hismanal) and to determine if the chosen task was of sufficient sensitivity to register decrements in performance at therapeutic dose levels of either of these two antihistamines. Thirty male subjects were divided into five groups of six subjects each. Each of the five groups was tested one day per week for three consecutive weeks. All Subjects received all three treatments (two antihistamines and a placebo) over the course of the test sessions. Order effect of the drug administration was counterbalanced. Analyses of variance showed that benadryl impaired performance on both components of the task as expected. Performance under hismanal did not vary significantly from the placebo. Post hoc testing further revealed an expected significant effect of benadryl three hours following ingestion for three out of four dependent variables. Again, hismanal effects did not vary significantly from those of the placebo. Hence, the memory/tracking combination task registered an expected performance impairment by benadryl which implies sufficient sensitivity of the task to register decrements. Also, hismanal displayed an expected lower incidence of behavioral effects as measured by response time and tracking error, which implies hismanal's usefulness in facilitating normal performance. / Master of Science

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Kong, Ying Yuk. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-142). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER ONE: --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO: --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- Corrective Feedback --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Focus on Form (FonF) --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Different Forms of Corrective Feedback --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- The Role of Corrective Feedback in SLA --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Summary --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3 --- Interaction and Language Development --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Input during Interaction and SLA --- p.17 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Output during Interaction and SLA --- p.17 / Chapter 2.4 --- Definition(s) of Recasts --- p.19 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Long's Definition of Recasts (2007) --- p.19 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Other Forms of Recasts in Classroom Settings --- p.20 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- Summary --- p.21 / Chapter 2.5 --- The Supporting Side FOR the Role of Recasts --- p.21 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- High Frequency of Occurrence --- p.21 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Increase Learners' Noticing --- p.22 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Empirical Support --- p.23 / Chapter 2.6 --- The Opposing Side AGAINST the Role of Recasts in SLA --- p.23 / Chapter 2.6.1 --- Recasts and its Ambiguity --- p.23 / Chapter 2.6.2 --- Recasts， Repair and Uptake --- p.24 / Chapter 2.6.3 --- Summary --- p.28 / Chapter 2.7 --- Recasts and its Saliency --- p.29 / Chapter 2.7.1 --- General Overview of the Forms of Recasts in Previous Studies --- p.29 / Chapter 2.7.2 --- : Doughty and Varela (1998) --- p.30 / Chapter 2.7.3 --- Leeman (2003) --- p.31 / Chapter 2.7.4 --- Lowen and Philp's Study (2006) --- p.34 / Chapter 2.7.5 --- Summary --- p.35 / Chapter 2.8 --- Noticing and SLA --- p.35 / Chapter 2.8.1 --- Attention，Noticing and Understanding --- p.36 / Chapter 2.8.2 --- Difficulty in Operationalizing 'Noticing' --- p.38 / Chapter 2.8.3 --- Summary: Saliency of Recasts，Noticing and Uptake --- p.40 / Chapter 2.9 --- The Notion of Learnability --- p.41 / Chapter 2.9.1 --- Processability Theory (PT) --- p.41 / Chapter 2.9.2 --- Relationship between Learnability and Provision of Feedback --- p.44 / Chapter 2.10 --- Pilot Study (2007) --- p.45 / Chapter 2.10.1 --- The Aim of the Pilot Study --- p.45 / Chapter 2.10.2 --- Methods --- p.45 / Chapter 2.10.3 --- General Results and Discussions --- p.47 / Chapter 2.10.4 --- Modification of the Instrumentation --- p.49 / Chapter 2.10.5 --- Summary --- p.50 / Chapter 2.11 --- Research Questions --- p.51 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.54 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.54 / Chapter 3.2 --- Participants --- p.54 / Chapter 3.3 --- Target Structure --- p.55 / Chapter 3.4 --- Materials --- p.56 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Testing Tasks --- p.56 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Treatment Tasks --- p.57 / Chapter 3.4.3. --- Others --- p.58 / Chapter 3.5 --- Design --- p.58 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Salient Recasts vs. Non-Salient Recasts --- p.58 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Participants ´ة Developmental Level --- p.59 / Chapter 3.5.3 --- Participants ' Responses to Recasts --- p.60 / Chapter 3.6 --- Procedures --- p.61 / Chapter 3.6.1 --- Pre-Test --- p.62 / Chapter 3.6.2 --- Treatments --- p.63 / Chapter 3.6.3 --- Post-Test and Delayed Post-Test --- p.63 / Chapter 3.7 --- Data Processing --- p.64 / Chapter 3.8 --- Data Analysis --- p.65 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- GENERAL STATISTICAL RESULTS FROM SPSS --- p.66 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2 --- General Results --- p.67 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- General Mean Scores of the Testing Tasks --- p.67 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Participants ' Responses to Recasts --- p.70 / Chapter 4.3 --- Answer to Research Question 1 --- p.77 / Chapter 4.4 --- Answer to Research Question 2 --- p.84 / Chapter 4.5 --- Answer to Research Question 3 --- p.89 / Chapter 4.6 --- Answer to Research Question 4 --- p.97 / Chapter 4.7 --- Conclusion --- p.100 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- DISCUSSION --- p.103 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.103 / Chapter 5.2 --- Discussion about Each Research Question --- p.103 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Discussion about Research Question 1 --- p.104 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Discussion about Research Question 2 --- p.108 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Discussion about Research Question 3 --- p.111 / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Discussion about Research Question 4 --- p.116 / Chapter 5.3 --- "Input Saliency, Uptake, Noticing and Long-term Memory" --- p.119 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Input Saliency vs. Noticing --- p.120 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Input Saliency vs. Uptake vs. Noticing --- p.123 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Input Saliency vs. Input´ةs Long-term Memory --- p.124 / Chapter 5.4 --- Conclusion --- p.126 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- "PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH" --- p.127 / Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.127 / Chapter 6.2 --- Pedagogical Implications --- p.127 / Chapter 6.3 --- Limitations of the Current Study --- p.131 / Chapter 6.4 --- Suggestions for Future Research --- p.133 / REFERENCES --- p.135 / APPENDIX I TESTINF TASK / APPENDIX II TREATMENT TASK / APPENDEX III-VIII SPSS Outputs

Research in the aviation domain, driving distractions, anesthesia administration, and nuclear power plant control rooms show that Concurrent Task Management (CTM) is a process that every human operator performs when interacting with complex environments. The need for understanding concurrent task management in a broader perspective more applicable and generalizable to different domains, led to the development of the Augmented Stage Model (ASM) of human information processing and the development of a test bed where hypotheses deriving from the augmented stage model can be tested. The ASM is an elaboration of the current Stage Model attempting to explain CTM in terms of those basic stages of human information processing and drawing on relevant, recent psychological research. One question that arises from the creation of the augmented stage model is to what degree the augmented stage model can be justified by actual human CTM performance. A corollary of this question is to what degree can CTM performance be explained by performance in simple tests that are derived directly from the stages of the model. To answer this question, 94 participants were tested on several standard cognitive tests suggested by the ASM: i.e. simple and complex reaction time, decision making, working memory, and intelligence. Performance in the cognitive tests was compared to participants' CTM performance in a multitasking simulator called the Task Management Environment (TME). The findings indicated that basic cognitive abilities, except for working memory, do not correlate significantly with CTM performance as calculated by the TME. Performance on three working memory tests was shown to predict up to 47% of the variation in CTM performance. This suggests that simple cognitive abilities do not predict CTM performance. Although, cognitive abilities might be a component of CTM, a combination of them might prove to better predict CTM performance. / Graduation date: 2004

The research presented in this dissertation addresses the Multi-Mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (MMRCPSP) in the presence of resource unavailability. This research is motivated by the scheduling of engineering design tasks in automotive product development to minimize the project completion time, but addresses a general scheduling situation that is applicable in many contexts. The current body of MMRCPSP research typically assumes that, 1) individual resource units are available at all times when assigning tasks to resources and, 2) before assigning tasks to resources, there must be enough resource availability over time to complete the task without interruption. In many situations such as assigning engineering design tasks to designers, resources are not available over the entire project-planning horizon. In the case of engineering designers and other human resources, unavailability may be due to several reasons such as vacation, training, or being scheduled to do other tasks outside the project. In addition, when tasks are scheduled they are often split to accommodate unavailable resources and are not completed in one continuous time segment. The objectives of this research are to obtain insight into the types of project scheduling situations where task splitting may result in significant makespan improvements, and to develop a fast and effective scheduling heuristic for such situations. A designed computational experiment was used to gain insight into when task splitting may provide significant makespan improvements. Problem instances were randomly generated using a modification of a standard problem generator, and optimally solved with and without task splitting using a branch and bound algorithm. In total 3,880 problem instances were solved with and without task splitting. Statistical analysis of the experimental data reveals that high resource utilization is the most important factor affecting the improvements obtained by task splitting. The analysis also shows that splitting is more helpful when resource unavailability occurs in multiple periods of short duration versus fewer periods of long duration. Another conclusion from the analysis indicates that the project precedence structure and the number (not amount) of resources used by tasks do not significantly affect the improvements due to task splitting. Using the insights from the computational testing, a new heuristic is developed that can be applied to large problems. The heuristic is an implementation of a simple priority rule-based heuristic with a new parameter used to control the number of task splits. It is desirable to obtain the majority of task splitting benefits with the smallest number of split tasks. Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate its performance against known optimal solutions for small sized problems. A deterministic version of the heuristic found optimal solutions for 33% of the problems and a stochastic version found optimal solutions for over 70%. The average percent increase in makespan compared to optimal was 7.58% for the deterministic heuristic and less than 2% for the stochastic versions demonstrating acceptable performance. / Graduation date: 2003

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-102).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-103).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 70 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 42-47).