Previous research has suggested that making certain items visually salient, or highlighting, can speed performance in a visual search task. But designers of interfaces cannot always easily anticipate a user's target, and highlighting items other than the target can be associated with performance decrements. three experiments were performed which demonstrated that people's performance in a visual search task is differentially sensitive to highlighting's predictiveness of target location. That sensitivity depends upon the proportion of instances in which highlighting actually predicts target location. A cognitive model constructed using the ACT-R architecture inferred that people evaluate and adjust their visual search behavior at a very small level of the task. / pages 71-83 and 88-95 are missing from hard copy of text

Cooper and Shallice (2000) implemented a computational version of the Norman and Shallice’s (1986) Contention Scheduling Model (CSM). The CSM is a hierarchically organized network of action schemas and goals. Botvinick and Plaut (2004) instead took a connectionist approach to modeling routine procedural behavior. They argued in favor of holistic, distributed representation of learned step co-occurrence associations. Two experiments found that people can adapt routine procedural behavior to changing circumstances quite readily and that other factors besides statistical co-occurrence can have influence on action selection. A CSM-inspired ACT-R model of the two experiments is the first to postdict differential error rates across multiple between-subjects conditions and trial types. Results from the behavioral and modeling studies favor a CSM-like theory of human routine procedural memory that uses discrete, hierarchically-organized goal and action representations that are adaptable to new but similar procedures. / Office of Naval Research grants #N00014-03-1-0094 and #N00014-06-1-0056

This work aims to integrate Byrne’s theory of visual salience computation (2006) with Salvucci’s model of eye movements (2001) by testing participants on a visual search task similar to Findlay (1997). By manipulating the number, salience, and spacing of targets, participants exhibited the global effect averaging phenomena during the first recorded saccade, whereby short‐latency saccades land in between adjacent objects. Previous work has argued that the saccadic targeting system causing the averaging is influenced both by the salience and arrangement of objects displayed (Rao, Zelinsky, Hayho, & Ballard, 2002). However, to accurately account for these results, we did not have to couple the salience system with the saccadic targeting system. Instead, the systems work sequentially and in isolation, whereby the salience system simply hands off the next object to examine to the targeting system, whose accuracy depends only on saccadic latency and the location of the targeted and non‐targeted items.

Le contrôle aérien doit faire face à une forte intensification du trafic aérien. Dans cette situation, la problématique de la charge mentale chez les contrôleurs aériens est une préoccupation majeure pour maintenir le niveau de sécurité actuel. Le système d’aide automatisé ERASMUS a été élaboré afin de réduire la charge mentale chez les contrôleurs aériens. L’objectif d’ERASMUS est de compenser les effets liés à l’intensification du trafic en réduisant de manière subliminale la charge mentale associée à l’augmentation des conflits potentiels. L’objectif principal de cette thèse est de proposer pour la première fois une mesure objective de l’impact du système d’aide ERASMUS sur la charge mentale des contrôleurs aériens. La réalisation de cet objectif a nécessité le développement d’une plateforme originale d’enregistrement et de traitement des mouvements oculaires non intrusive dans un environnement de simulation hautement fidèle. Les mouvements oculaires d’un groupe de contrôleurs aériens experts ont été enregistrés. En accord avec l’hypothèse d’ERASMUS, les résultats ont montré des effets de tailles moyennes à grandes sur l’amplitude des saccades, le temps moyen passé sur les aéronefs et sur la distribution de l’attention allouée à la scène visuelle. De plus, sans ERASMUS, l’augmentation de la densité du trafic a augmenté de manière significative les diamètres pupillaires. A l’opposé, quand ERASMUS est actif, l’intensification du trafic n’a pas impacté significativement les diamètres pupillaires. Nous discutons l’impact d’ERASMUS sur la charge mentale ainsi que l’utilisation des mesures oculométriques dans un environnement de simulation écologique de contrôle aérien. / Air Traffic Control has to handle the strong and constant increase in air traffic density. In this context, mental workload experienced by air traffic controllers is a key research concept to maintain the actual safety level. ERASMUS is an automated aid system designed to reduce air traffic controllers’ workload. The purpose of ERASMUS is to compensate the effects of the air traffic growth by reducing the increased mental workload associated with a greater number of potential conflicts. Prior experiments designed to validate the ERASMUS system showed a reduction in ratings of mental workload, but only subjectives measures were used. In the present thesis, the first goal is to complete these first results by providing, for the first time, a real time objective measure of controllers’ mental workload. In this purpose, we had to develop a new non-intrusive eye-tracking platform in a fully realistic simulation environment. The eye movements of seven controllers, placed in a high-fidelity simulation, were recorded. Traffic sequences were manipulated (with vs. without ERASMUS). Consistent with a reduced workload hypothesis, results showed medium to large effects of ERASMUS on the amplitude of saccades, on the time spent gazing aircraft, and on the distribution of attention over the visual scene. Moreover, without ERASMUS, growth in the traffic density significantly increased pupil diameters. In contrast, when ERASMUS was activated, traffic density growth did not impact significantly pupil diameters. Finally, we discuss the impact of ERASMUS on mental workload and the use of pupillometric measures in an ecological air traffic control environment.

The requirements for virtual agents are more and more demanding. In order to manage the complex behavior of the agent, it's possible to take advantage of cognitive architectures which arised on the field neuroscience and artificial intelligence. This work examines PoJACTR library which links Pogamut library for developing intelligent agents in Unreal Tournament 2004 and jACT-R library which is Java implementation of one of the leading cognitive architectures ACTR. This work also studies certain agent implementation problems in PoJACTR and proposes a solution for them in form of debugging tools, which were subsequently implemented on an Eclipse IDE platform. In addition, it expands PoJACTR navigation and communication library modules for the game - Capture The Flag. As a validation, two agents (bots) were developed to play game, one in standard Pogamut and one in PoJACTR. When matched against each other in battle, Po- JACTR bot had comparable performance to a Pogamut bot. The results showed that debugging tools facilitated development process of PoJACTR agents.

The requirements for virtual agents are more and more demanding. In order to manage the complex behavior of the agent, it's possible to take advantage of cognitive architectures which arised on the field neuroscience and artificial intelligence. This work examines PoJACTR library which links Pogamut library for developing intelligent agents in Unreal Tournament 2004 and jACT-R library which is Java implementation of one of the leading cognitive architectures ACTR. This work also studies certain agent implementation problems in PoJACTR and proposes a solution for them in form of debugging tools, which were subsequently implemented on an Eclipse IDE platform. In addition, it expands PoJACTR navigation and communication library modules for the game - Capture The Flag. As a validation, two agents (bots) were developed to play game, one in standard Pogamut and one in PoJACTR. When matched against each other in battle, PoJACTR bot had comparable performance to a Pogamut bot. The results showed that debugging tools facilitated development process of PoJACTR agents. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Le contrôle aérien doit faire face à une forte intensification du trafic aérien. Dans cette situation, la problématique de la charge mentale chez les contrôleurs aériens est une préoccupation majeure pour maintenir le niveau de sécurité actuel. Le système d'aide automatisé ERASMUS a été élaboré afin de réduire la charge mentale chez les contrôleurs aériens. L'objectif d'ERASMUS est de compenser les effets liés à l'intensification du trafic en réduisant de manière subliminale la charge mentale associée à l'augmentation des conflits potentiels. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est de proposer pour la première fois une mesure objective de l'impact du système d'aide ERASMUS sur la charge mentale des contrôleurs aériens. La réalisation de cet objectif a nécessité le développement d'une plateforme originale d'enregistrement et de traitement des mouvements oculaires non intrusive dans un environnement de simulation hautement fidèle. Les mouvements oculaires d'un groupe de contrôleurs aériens experts ont été enregistrés. En accord avec l'hypothèse d'ERASMUS, les résultats ont montré des effets de tailles moyennes à grandes sur l'amplitude des saccades, le temps moyen passé sur les aéronefs et sur la distribution de l'attention allouée à la scène visuelle. De plus, sans ERASMUS, l'augmentation de la densité du trafic a augmenté de manière significative les diamètres pupillaires. A l'opposé, quand ERASMUS est actif, l'intensification du trafic n'a pas impacté significativement les diamètres pupillaires. Nous discutons l'impact d'ERASMUS sur la charge mentale ainsi que l'utilisation des mesures oculométriques dans un environnement de simulation écologique de contrôle aérien.

One important aspect of the quality of programming languages is the effort required by a programmer to understand code written in the language. A historical case where this issue was at the forefront was in the debate between the proponents of high-level languages (HLL) and Assembly languages, where the main argument for HLLs were that they were easier for people to understand. Being one out of a series of articles arguing for a unified theory for software engineering, this article proposes the use of a specific theoretical model from the discipline of cognitive psychology as a tool for predicting language comprehension effort. Describing human problem solving faculties, the ACT-R model [Anderson and Lebiere 1998] predicts that the effort of understanding a program written in C is only 36,5% of the effort of understanding a comparable program written in Assembly. In order to validate the theory, an experiment was performed where a number of engineering students were exposed to tasks of program comprehension. This empirical assessment demonstrated that the effort of understanding a program written in C is 32,5% of the effort of understanding a comparable program written in Assembly. Comparing the results of the theoretical predictions and the empirical assessments of program comprehension effort, we find that the theoretical model performs surprisingly well. The prediction error for the execution of an Assembly program was 5,1% while the error for C was 6,8%. The prediction error for the ratio between the two program languages amounted to 12,6%. / <p>QC 20130618</p>

There has been a recent flurry of activity in consciousness research. Although an operational definition of consciousness has not yet been developed, philosophy has come to identify a set of features and aspects that are thought to be associated with the various elements of consciousness. On the other hand, there have been several recent attempts to develop computational models of consciousness that are claimed to capture or illustrate one or more aspects of consciousness. As a plausible substitute to evaluating how well the current computational models model consciousness, this study examines how the current computational models fare in modeling those aspects and features of consciousness identified by philosophy. Following a detailed and critical review of the literature of philosophy of consciousness, this study constructs a composite and eclectic list of features and aspects that would be expected in any successful model of consciousness. The study then evaluates, from the viewpoint of that list, some of the current self-claimed computational models of consciousness, specifically CLARION, IDA, ACT-R and model proposed in the Cleeremans&#039 / review and study. The computational models studied are evaluated with respect to each identified aspect and feature of consciousness.

Cognitive Grammar is a theory within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics that gives an account of human linguistic ability based entirely on general cognitive abilities. Because of the general complexity and open-endedness of the theory, there is not much computational work associated with it. This thesis proposes that ACT-R cognitive architecture can provide the basic primitives for the cognitive abilities required for a better implementation of Cognitive Grammar. Thus, a language model was developed on the ACT-R architecture. The model processes active and passive sentences, constructs their propositional representations, and tests the representation on a sentence verification task of the experiment of Anderson (1974).