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Cognitive Process

Human Computer Interaction


Cognitive process

 As we have already discussed that cognition can be described in


terms of specific kinds of processes. These include:

• Attention
• Memory
• Perception and recognition
• Learning
• Reading, speaking and listening
• Problem solving, planning, reasoning, decision-making
Attention
 Attention is the process of selecting things to concentrate
on, at a point in time, from the range
of possibilities available
 Attention allow us to focus on information that is relevant
to what we are doing.

 Attention involves
1) auditory senses
2) visual senses
Examples of auditory senses & visual
senses
 an example of auditory attention
is waiting in the dentist's waiting room for our name to
be called out to know when it is our time to go in.
 Auditory attention is based on pitch, timber and intensity.

 Example of attention involving the visual attention


in scanning examination result on notice board.
 Visual attention based on color and location.
Models of Attention

 Divided attention • Focused attention

Available capacity senses

Short term store

Possible activities Processing


Focused Attention

 Only one thing can be the focus of attention

 Attention focus is voluntary or involuntary


 Information at the interface should be structured to
capture users’ attention
o meaningfulness
o structure of display
o use of color, intensity,
o use of modalities
Activity: Find the price of a Activity: Find the price for
double room at the Holiday Inn in a double room at the
Bradley Quality Inn in Columbia
Divided attention

 More than one thing can be focused at a same time is


called divided attention
 Divided Attention is voluntary or involuntary

 Examples of divide attention are:


 person able to drive while holding a conversation with a passenger.

 A person Listening a news and writing it on the paper.


Voluntary and involuntary attention

 Voluntary Attention:
A further property of attention is that can be voluntary, as when we
make a conscious effort to change our attention.

 Involuntary Attention:
Attention may also be involuntary, as when the salient characteristics
of the competing stimuli grab our attention
An example of over-use of graphics
How to make attention of users

 Make information salient when it needs attending to

 Use techniques that make things stand out like colour,


ordering, spacing, underlining, sequencing and
animation

 Avoid using too much colours because the software


allows it
Memory

 Indeed, much of our everyday activities rely on memory,


As well as storing all knowledge, our memory contains
our knowledge of actions or procedures.
 It allow us to repeat the actions, to use the new
information, to use the language via our senses.
 It also gives us our sense of identity, by preserving
information from our past experiences
 to understand the working of memory, we have need
to understand the structure of memory
A Model of Memory
 Three memory stores Sensory
o sensory memory memory
information for a very brief period of
time(a few seconds)
Short term
o short term memory
memory
Hold limited information for a short period
of time
o Long term memory
Long term
Holds information indefinitely memory
Sensory Memory
 The sensory memories act as buffer for stimuli received
form senses
 A sensory memory exists for each sensory channel:
 Iconic memory for visual stimuli
 Echoic memory for aural stimuli(repeat a question) stimuli
 Haptic memory for touch stimuli.

 These memories are constantly overwritten by new


information coming in these channels.
Short Term Memory

 Scratch-pad for temporary recall

 New info can interfere with old info

 Short term memory has a limited capacity


Example:

 calculate the multiplication 35 × 6 in your head. The


chances are that you will have done this calculation in
stages, perhaps 5 × 6 and then 30 × 6 and added the
results; or you may have used the fact that 6=2×3 and
calculated 2×35=70 followed by 3 × 70. To perform
calculations such as this we need to store the inter-
mediate stages for use later which uses STM.
Methods for measuring memory capacity

 There are generally two methods for measuring the capacity:


I. Determining the length of a sequence which can be remembered in order.
II. Allow the items to be freely recalled in any order( chunks)

 Using the first measure, the average person can remember 7 ± 2 digits
eg: Look at the following number sequence: 265397620853
Now write down as much of the sequence as you can remember. If you
remembered between five and nine digits your digit span is average.

 Now try the following sequence: 92 333 425 8920


A generalization of the 7 ± 2 rule is that we can remember 7 ± 2 chunks of
information. Therefore chunking information can increase the short-term
memory capacity.
Long Term Memory
 LTM is the main resource, where we store anything for
the long time
 It has a slow access time than the STM
 Information stored in LTM can not be forgotten and can
be recall anytime
 It is huge than the STM , however it is not unlimited.
Long Term Memory
 Long Term Memory consist of two types:

1. Episodic Memory
Represents our memory of events and experiences in a serial form. It is
the memory that we can recall that took place at the given points in
our lives

2. Semantic Memory
It is a structured record of facts, concepts and skills that we acquired.
It stores the things that we learn from our experiences.

Semantic LTM derived from episodic LTM such that we can learn new
facts or concepts from our experiences.
LT Memory Structure
 Semantic memory structure
 provides access to information
 represents relationships between bits of information
 supports inference(deriving logical conclusions from premises known)

 Model: semantic network


One model for the way in which semantic memory is structured is as
a network.
 inheritance – child nodes inherit properties of parent nodes
 relationships between bits of information explicit
 supports inference through inheritance
LTM - semantic network
 Subjects were asked questions about different properties of related objects
and their reaction times were measured. The types of question asked were
o Can a collie breathe?’
o Is a beagle a hound?’
o Does a hound track?’
 The answers to such questions may seem obvious, subjects took longer to
answer questions such as ‘Can a collie breathe?’ than ones such as ‘Does
a hound track?’ -Suggested reason is that in the former case subjects had
to search further through the memory hierarchy to find the answer, since
information is stored at its most abstract level.
LTM processes
 3 processes
Storage or remembering of information
Forgetting
Information retrieval
LTM - Storage of information
 rehearsal
 the rehearsal of a piece of information transfers it into long-term memory
 information moves from STM to LTM

 total time hypothesis


 the amount learned is directly proportional to the amount of time spent learning.

 structure, meaning and familiarity


 information easier to remember
 If information is not meaningful it is more difficult to remember
Distribution of practice effect
 Learning time is most effective if it is distributed over time.
 For example, in an experiment in which Post Office workers
were taught to type, those whose training period was divided
into weekly sessions of one hour performed better than those
who spent two or four hours a week learning (although the
former obviously took more weeks to complete their training)
LTM - retrieval
 recall
information reproduced from memory can be
assisted by cues, e.g. categories, imagery

 recognition
information gives knowledge that it has been seen
before
less complex than recall - information is cue
LT Memory (Forgetting)
decay
information is lost gradually but very slowly

interference
new information replaces old: retroactive
interference
old may interfere with new: proactive inhibition
Learning
 Learning can be consider in two terms:
1. Procedural (skills or actions u r capable of performing)
o According to procedural learning we come to any object with questions like
how to use it? How to do something?
o For example, how to ride a bike?
2. Declarative(knowledge of facts or concepts)
o In this learning we study about facts. We try to find facts about something.it
explains what do u know?
o For example, how to explain in words to ride a bike? It is difficult to explain so
u use words to show your knowledge
Reading, speaking and listening

 These three forms of language processing have both


similar and different properties.
 One similarity is that the meaning of sentence is the
same regardless of the mode in which it is conveyed.
E.g. “computer is the wonderful invention” is the sentence which we
can read speak and listen easily depending on a person, task and
context. Because some people find the listening easier than the
reading
Reading, Speaking & Listening

 Specific differences in them are following


Reading can be quicker than speaking or listening, as written text
can be rapidly scanned in ways not possible when listening to
presented spoken words.
Listening requires less cognitive actions than the reading and
speaking. Mostly children like to listen than the reading
Written language tend to b grammatical while spoken language
is ungrammatical.
Reading, Speaking & Listening

 These are the marked differences between people in


their ability to use the language
 Some people prefer reading to listening, while others pre
fer listening.
 Likewise, some people prefer speaking to writing and vic
e versa
Reasoning
 Reasoning is the process by which we use the
knowledge we have to draw conclusions or infer
something new about our interest
 Reasoning also involves working through different
scenarios and deciding which is the best option or
solution to a given problem.
 In the route-planning activity:
We may be aware of alternative routes and reasons
through the advantages and disadvantages of each route
before deciding the best one.
Reasoning

 There are different types of reasoning:


1. Deductive reasoning
2. Inductive reasoning
3. Abductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning
 Deductive reasoning derives the logically necessary
conclusion from the given premises. For example
o It is Friday then she will go to work
o If It is Friday
o Therefore she will go to work
 Logical conclusion not necessarily true:

e.g. If it is raining then the ground is dry


It is raining
Therefore the ground is dry is a perfectly valid deduction, even
though it conflicts with our knowledge of what is true in the world.
Inductive reasoning
 Induction is generalizing from cases we have seen to infer information
about cases we have not seen. For example,

 If once we saw the bunches of red roses, we can infer that all roses are red.
We can disprove the inference simply by producing the roses in different colors
because, no matter how many roses we have seen red and how many roses we
have seen with different colors. The best that we can do is gather evidence to
support our inductive inference

 In spite of its unreliability, induction is a useful process, which we use constantly


in learning about our environment
Abductive reasoning
 Abduction reasons from a fact to the action or state
that caused it.
 This is the method we use to drive explanations for the
events
 E.g. , We know that Sam always drive too fast when he has been
drinking. If we see Sam is driving too fast we will infer that Sam has
been drinking. It is not necessary that it must be a reason may be he
is driving fast due to another reason.
 in spite of its unreliability, it is clear people do infer
explanations in this way and hold onto them until they
have evidence to support an alternative theory &
explanation.
Problem Solving
 problem solving is the process of finding a solution to an unfamiliar
task by using a knowledge, we have.
 Human problem solving is characterized by the ability to adapt the
information we have to deal with new situations.
 There are many theories about problem solving. One of the theories
was invented by the scientists Newell and Simon in the 1970’s , the
so called Problem Space Theory. This theory was based on the idea
that the human mind is a limited information processor. This
processor can be visualized like an automata with states and you
can use state transition operators to come from the initial state over
several steps to your goal.
 While solving a problem user can make mistakes.
Problem Solving
 There are two models of errors:
1. SLIPS: Slips are errors which result from changes in the context of skilled
behavior. As we said before if we change for example the position of
the abort-button of a window interface from left to right, then
unfortunately most of the users would click on the right side because
they are used to the right oriented position of the abort-button. So
when we design interactive systems we need to take care which
changes we make and how we can avoid error-prone behavior of our
users.
2. MENTAL MODEL: based on the idea that human make errors when
they understand a model, a situation or a system wrong. So we have
to think of how we can make our systems easy in order to make it
understandable for our users.
 Finally we can say that for designing interactive systems we need to
have a good knowledge of the human thinking and its psychology.
Every human is individual and our goal is to provide computer systems
for every kind of human being.

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