Developing 3-D Spatial Skills in Engineering Students

The ability to visualize in three dimensions is a cognitive skill that has been shown to be important for success in engineering and other technological fields. For engineering, the ability to mentally rotate 3-D objects is especially important. Unfortunately, of all the cognitive skills, 3-D rotation abilities exhibit robust gender differences, favoring males. The assessment of 3-D spatial skill and associated gender differences has been a topic of educational research for nearly a century; however, a great deal of the previous work has been aimed at merely identifying differences. Dr. Sorby has been conducting research in the area of spatial skills development for more than a decade aimed at identifying practical methods for improving 3-D spatial skills, especially for women engineering students. This presentation details the significant findings obtained over the past several years through this research and identifies strategies that appear to be effective in developing 3-D spatial skills and in contributing to student success.

A Bayesian Likelihood Display Approach to Enhancing Detection of Illicit Radioactive Materials at Border Crossings and Ports

New non-destructive inspection and data synthesis technologies have been introduced in an effort to detect illicit radioactive material at border crossings and ports. Currenly, radiation portal monitors (RPMs) are being installed at all ports of entry to the US. Due to the occurence of false alarms based on naturally occuring radioactive materials, and the low base rate of nuclear smuggling incidents, the probability of a true threat alarm is extremely low. The false alarms create an immense human factors cost in the form of added workload to customs officers who must clear and discharge vehicles. At the same time, application of signal detection theory and Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analysis shows that while simple detection capability is good, threat classification performance can be at chance level! In this presentation I outline an approach to the problem based on Bayesian theory and the concept of the likelihood display that incorporates additional data on the radiation energy spectrum and cargo commodity information. A field study conducted at a Canada-US border crossing showed that application of the theoretical approach reduced nuisance alarms to near 0 while raising classification performance to 92%. Bayesian threat likelihood displays thus offer an approach for enhancing the effectivenss of homeland security detection and warning systems by raising the credibility of the alerts that are provided.

Symbiotic Relationship of Forensic Human Factors and Research

This presentation will describe the activities of a human factors consultant in the role of an expert witness in litigation matters.  Common sequence of events and production will be presented in conjuction with professional/ethical aspects.  A symbiotic tie to research is revealed in expert qualification, as a prompt/cue, and in theory development.  Specific examples of real cases and associated materials will be presented focusing on warning about "hidden" hazards of consumer products.

In 2001, General Motors developed a lab in their R&D organization called the Human Machine Interface (HMI) research lab. This lab was developed for two reasons: 1) to conduct research into the cognitive and perceptual issues with incorporating new technologies into the vehicle interior, and 2) to apply those learnings in the development of new innovative technologies.  This talk will detail two recent projects conducted within the lab. 

First, I will discuss a project aimed at developing new methods of interacting with common infotainment (e.g., car radio) and navigation features.  This portion of the talk will detail the iterative design process and validation testing that was conducted on three recently-patented HMIs.  Second, I will discuss a project aimed at developing new technologies that leverage a person’s ability to process ambient visual information with little or no attentional cost while still performing a task that requires the processing of focal visual information. This portion of the talk will highlight some recent research that looked into how people process ambient visual information, and highlight some aspects of recently developed related technologies.

This talk will discuss the following questions: How do we decide to disclose or not disclose information about illness? What are the social consequences of disclosing or not disclosing? What are the personal consequences of feeling able to talk or nottalk about illness? What role does stigma play?

Astronaut spatial abilities are constantly challenged due to the unique character of the weightless environment, since gravity no longer anchors perception of “down”, and the spacecraft is frequently viewed from arbitrarily oriented viewpoints.  Shuttle and ISS crews also conduct telerobotic operations requiring  ability to interrelate multiple camera and control reference frames, and visualize robotic arm clearance from a variety of imagined perspectives.   In this talk I’ll review the disorientation and navigation problems encountered by astronauts.  I’ll describe experiments on in humans and animals showing that local spatial environmental knowledge is coded in a allocentric frame whose orientation is labile.   Ground simulation and astronaut training experiments demonstrate that individual mental rotation and perspective taking abilities influence human performance in 3D spatial orientation, navigation, and space telerobotic tasks.  Supported by NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC9—58 with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute.