Applied Cognitive Psychology

An Information-Processing Framework

Paul Barber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317309369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología aplicada

Originally published in 1988 Applied Cognitive Psychology draws on the psychology of perception, attention, and cognition to give an understanding of some everyday activities and skills. Paul Barber focuses on processes involved in selecting simple actions, face perception, reading, and tasks requiring attention skills. He uses practical problems as starting points for discussion, including mental overloading in air-traffic controllers, cooker-hob design, the use of Photokit/identikit, and reading from computer screens. The book also examines the strengths and limitations of the basic analytical approach of 'information-processing' in psychology.

As well as providing a textbook for students of psychology and ergonomics, Applied Cognitive Psychology will still be welcomed by those from other disciplines – management studies, education, sports science – who need to understand skilled behaviour in applied settings.

1 On the Application of Psychology

General introduction

This book deals with some practical and theoretical matters in the field of human performance, embracing aspects of human activity that in general textbooks on cognitive psychology are referred to as perception, skill, memory, and attention. This is an area which has intimate connections with applied psychology and ergonomics (the study of the interface between the human organism and the environment). Applicability is of central interest throughout this book, and it will be dealt with in relation to a set of general problem areas within cognitive psychology.

Relation between theory and applications in psychology

Theory before practice?

Our interest in the application of psychology compels us to develop a view about the relation between theory and practice in psychology. A traditional view of this sees the research of the pure scientist motivated by theoretical considerations with no concern for its practical applicability. It is the business of the discipline's practitioners to seek out and identify applications. The view is of a gentle and productive flow of ideas from the domain of basic theory and research, continually being brought into register with practical issues by applied researchers.

This, then, is the conventional view of scientific progress; knowledge is first developed by experiment and theory, and is only subsequently applied to concrete problems. It has been characterized by Bakan (1980) as the two-step vision of scientific development, a notion so conventional and so firmly entrenched that it is hard to imagine that the conduct of science might be otherwise. Evidence in general for the two-step view includes the development of the use of electricity, the discovery of penicillin, the invention of radar, the proximity fuse for bombs, and most dramatically the atom bomb; all were preceded by theoretical advances. The two-step view of scientific progress was institutionalized by the contribution of scientists to the war effort between 1939 and 1945, with theoretical and laboratory research transferring from the laboratory with great effect. Indeed the two-step view has been partly accepted because of the great productivity of applied science in times of crisis; in particular, the extraordinary fertility of the psychological scene during the Second World War supports this analysis. Bakan (1980), however, expressed a sour opinion about this mode of applied science, considering the isolation and insulation of basic research from human problems as a factor in what he saw as a growing disillusionment of the public with science and technology. His preferred approach was one which centres on the problems, and gears the research effort in general to solutions to these problems.

Theory driven by practice?

Whether science is or can be practised on a two-step basis, and whether this is how it should be practised, is open to question. As a matter of historical fact, as Bakan (1980) noted, technology has frequently been in advance of theoretical understanding (e.g., photography was developed without a grasp of the underlying chemical processes). One alternative to the two-step view, to start one's enquiry with practical problems, is taken by Broadbent (1980), for several years the director of one of Britain's most influential research units specializing in applied experimental psychology. Addressing the question of the role of models in psychological thinking he expressed a set of priorities that also relate directly to the matter of the application of psychology:

What follows is the credo of an applied experimental psychologist. Briefly, I do not believe one should start with a model of man and then investigate those areas in which the model predicts particular results. I believe one should start from practical problems, which at any one time will point us towards some part of human life.

Experiment and observation follow, leading to a model which 'can be used as a guide for action', and 'may make other practical problems more tractable'. The emphasis on the focus of this activity, the practical problem, could not be clearer.

In discussing the need to 'start from practical problems', Broadbent (1980) described examples of how such problems have led to important theoretical developments. He noted that it was only recently noticed that human performance is influenced by the time of day when it is measured, a fact that had eluded psychologists until they were called to work on 'continuous flow processes'. The operation of such processes has to proceed around the clock with shifts of workers succeeding one another. Research contracted by industrial and military authorities into these conditions of work revealed the time-of-day effects. Other research of an applied nature was responsible for restoring the important concept of 'attention' to psychological respectability in the 1950s. This concept, which is so familiar in everyday usage, fell into disuse at the turn of the century because of its mentalistic connotations. It was not until applied psychologists, foremost among them Broadbent himself, were called to enquire into the problems of communication between, for example, air-traffic controllers and pilots, that it was realized that the function of 'attention' was not among the theoretical ideas of the day. Theoretical accounts were accordingly modified, and one of the first models of human performance was formulated by Broadbent (1958). The important point about this development in psychology, and there is no gainsaying its significance even though it has since been radically amended, is that it was precipitated by discoveries in an applied setting.

The problem-oriented approach will be accepted here as appropriate to psychology's current priorities. The attempt will be made to establish connections between research dealing with practical issues and the theoretical efforts that basic psychology is more directly concerned with. It will be apparent from an examination of the applied psychological journals, however, that references to the theoretical underpinnings of applied research are often very loose and even merely allusive, as if in a rather forlorn attempt to preserve the link with an increasingly remote theoretical source. There is an abundance of applied psychological research, but a relatively small proportion of it consists of theory-driven research relating to a real-world problem. The connections between basic and applied psychology may therefore be somewhat indirect, and we consider in the next section what the potential contributions from the former to the latter might be.

It would nevertheless be a mistake to suppose that there is a one-way flow of benefits and contributions. Indeed, we can view applications-based research as a particularly demanding testbed for psychological theory. It cannot of course be the only one since it is in the nature of some psychological issues that they are delicate plants which simply do not readily transfer to the rough soil outside the laboratory. The direct consequences of some psychological investigations may be too marginal in terms of the magnitude of the changes in the dependent variables used (time taken to respond, number of errors committed, etc.) for there to be any material consequences to be taken note of by the applications researcher. Such issues, which may have considerable theoretical consequences and have an important bearing on how the field of enquiry is conceptualized and developed, need to be settled in the confines of the laboratory. With this proviso, and all else being equal, there is a strong case for those involved in pure research to ensure that they are concerning themselves with those aspects of psychology that bear most prominently on the everyday functioning of human beings.

For some twenty years psychology (along with other disciplines) has been subjected to an unprecedented degree of arm-twisting regarding 'relevance' and 'usefulness'. Students' expectations of the subject reflect this concern, so that an 'ivory-tower' stance is more difficult than ever to sustain and justify; and to a degree psychology has responded to these pressures. However, they have been pressures operating on a long-range basis and it is arguable that they have been applied more as a form of gentle persuasion. What seems to confront us today, on the other hand, is a very different matter. The current crisis for psychology is to respond to the blunter and more urgent problems arising from changes in the world at large. In particular, there is the looming challenge of the information technology revolution, and there are related changes in the nature of work, the emancipating spread of literacy to developing nations, and a seemingly unending list of other factors that generate problems of increasing urgency for psychologists and other social and biological scientists to tackle. Aside from being socially irresponsible it would –because of the fundamental psychological issues that are raised – be foolish to ignore these changes in the world outside the sphere of 'pure' research. Hence, whether one takes a traditional two-step view, or a more radical problem-oriented view, the application of all branches of basic psychology is a topic of importance and urgency.

What psychology has to offer

To give an introductory account to the application of experimental, cognitive psychology, it is helpful to supply some indications of what might be applied. The intention in this section is to provide a rudimentary means of identifying the nature of what it is in a given instance that has been applied, and the aspects that are noted are not by any means exhaustive, and often overlap. The brief sketch that follows serves the purpose of raising a few flags, a detailed presentation being inappropriate at this stage since this is more effectively supplied by the applications described in later chapters. What is on offer then?

Theory

At the head of the list are the theories that psychology, ever so tentatively, offers. They come in all shapes and, particularly, sizes. There was a time when psychologists were not so tentative and went in for theories on a grand scale (e.g., Hull 1943; Skinner 1938), and broad reaches of human behaviour were intended to be accommodated within their theoretical horizons. It is often considered to be the mark of a good theory that it is refutable, and the grand theories of experimental psychology turned out to have this desirable property. They were, however, so comprehensive that they could withstand the impact of failed assumptions and as complete theoretical systems they took many years to fade away.

The fashion has in recent years been the specification and development of what are termed 'miniature models', concerned with the detailed and closely focused examination of limited aspects of behaviour and mental functioning. Larger enterprises will no doubt be undertaken in due course as overlap and consistency between these relatively small-scale theoretical efforts increase, and perhaps also as accounts emanating from work on artificial intelligence become influential in the mainstream of psychology.

The best of these contemporary approaches to theorizing also have the merit of falsifiability of their assumptions, and it is possible to discern definite progress in certain areas of research as assumptions are modified or abandoned and ideas clarified. This is not always so and some theoretical accounts persist simply because of the lack of any clear alternatives. But durability is also the mark of a theory which stands the test of time, not because of any particular merit or validity of its assumptions but because they are not stated with sufficient specificity to be subjected to a crucial experimental test. Such theories have been attacked (e.g., by Newell 1973) for their ability to respond on an ad hoc basis to more or less any empirical twist or turn, by appealing to some previously unconsidered variations in the weighting given to this or that factor, to the possibility for subjects to discover another unforeseen permutation of their mental resources, all within the current rules contained in the experimental procedure. It should be noted that this criticism is aimed at many of the theoretical endeavours that are undertaken in the very areas focused on in the present book.

A superficial examination of the applied psychological literature may give the impression that there are close connections between theory and practice, simply judging this on the frequency with which theoretical papers are referred to. For a theory to be able to accommodate the results of empirical studies in the way suggested indicates either that Newell's (1973) critique has even wider force, or that the references to theory are noncritical and are more in the nature of preserving a connection with the global ideational origins of the research than of demonstrating a real point of contact. This does not mean that the quality of applied psychological research is low, though some undoubtedly is, but that there is little glue between theory and practice. In any event the connection with theory is spurious when the applications research itself is not driven by theoretical considerations, and the theory is unmoved by the outcome of the investigation. A test of the latter possibility is the low incidence of references to the applications literature in the journals which publish basic psychological research studies, though it has to be admitted that this could be a reflection of an ignorance of applied studies on the part of pure scientists, or their unwillingness to accept the relevance of such research to their own endeavours.

Method

It is often said that what is applicable is not so much the theoretical stuff of psychology as its elaborate repertoire of methods of investigation and discovery. In any event much psychological theory is so highly circumscribed that the possibilities for applying it outside the laboratory are limited. Indeed it could be argued that an applied version of the discipline should develop its own accounts of limited aspects of real-world psychological activities and tasks. While there may be considerable ground in common between the laboratory and real-world versions of the subject, and there may be mutual benefit to be gained by parallel investigations of particular issues, the real traffic in ideas may for some time to come be of a methodological kind. This is liable to be to the advantage of applied psychology because the relatively unhurried nature of laboratory-based 'pure' research provides more opportunities for techniques and investigative procedures to be developed, explored and perfected. This is not to say that applied researchers will not make substantial contributions of a methodological kind – indeed they have a vested interest in developing whatever variations in methods and procedures are required for field experimentation. The point is that they do not, on this analysis, need to feel this as a primary call on their resources, and they can frequently look elsewhere, to the pure experimentalist, for methodological inspiration. How far one might be prepared to press this case is for the reader to judge. It is clear, however, (and this book will incidentally demonstrate this) that applied psychology makes extensive use of the methods developed in 'basic' psychological research, so something of the division of labour that has been suggested does already implicitly exist.

In drawing attention to psychology's methodological offerings, we should be sensitive to the echo of Maslow's (1946) strictures against psychology, that it should not allow itself to be driven by obsession with method to the exclusion of the human problems that are its province. It remains the case, without abdicating responsibility for problems, that basic psychology is methodologically very well equipped and offers a sophistication in this respect that augurs well for applications research. There are thousands of published studies on any number of topics that signal to the intending applications researcher what experimental procedures might be appropriate, what statistical methods have been found to be useful, what options there are for the overall design of an experiment, what nuisance variables the investigator needs to be on guard against, what dependent variables might need to be measured, and how this may be achieved, what technical resources in the way of scientific equipment may be used for controlling the experiment and the environment to which the subject is to be exposed, and what characteristics of the subject population need to be controlled, balanced, or partialled out statistically. By no means all the snags of implementing an investigation will be found in the pages of the scientific journals of psychology, and much goes unsaid which novice investigators will stumble over. But in the course of a basic psychological training they will be made aware of much of what needs to be taken into account in the planning and conduct of an investigation, and this collective wisdom is to be found described in the open literature of psychology.

The methodological expertise relevant to the applied researcher in mainstream experimental psychology can be illustrated from areas such as psychophysics, and reaction-time studies. Psychophysics is the study of how sensory experience is related to the physical characteristics of stimulation. It is, for example, concerned with what may be described as the boundary or 'threshold' performance of the senses, e.g., how faint a tone can be heard, how dim a light can be seen, how small a change in the intensity of either can be appreciated. It is also concerned with how changes in the properties of stimuli of an above-threshold magnitude are mirrored in the sensation produced in an observer. Appropriate to these kinds of questions a collection of techniques has been developed, known as psychophysical methods, to estimate the way in which the observer's performance tracks changes in the physical parameters manipulated by the investigators (Dember and Warm 1979; Scharf 1975).

Problems with the classical psychophysical methods – including the failure under certain circumstances of different methods to produce equivalent results – led to the development of alternative methods, falling under the general rubric of signal detection theory (SDT) (Green and Swets 1966). As with some other psychological methods SDT comes equipped with a considerable theoretical capability. In practice, however, it is often applied with little explicit commitment to a theoretical position, other than an acceptance of its central assumption of the importance of obtaining separate measures of an individual's sensory competence and judgemental bias. One observer may, for example, be well able to detect a warning signal, yet for whatever reason (perhaps natural caution) show hesitancy in reporting its occurrence, while another may respond at the merest hint of alarm. Analyses based on the SDT approach have been widely applied outside the area of psychophysics, to research on memory, attention, and personality (Clark 1969; Long 1975; Parks 1966; Price 1966). The use of SDT means that in a given task a subject's performance is characterized by measures separating the efficiency of his or her sensory, attentional, or memory systems, from the readiness of the subject to make the different responses required.

Another widely used method is the reaction-time technique, involving the recording of how long a subject takes to initiate a response to a stimulus, to solve a problem, to answer a question, to search for and find a target, to make a decision as to whether something has been encountered before, and so forth. The assumption may be made that the time taken will reveal something about the underlying mental processes. This is an assumption that has been utilized in psychology for over 100 years (e.g., see Donders 1969), and has in recent times been implemented with the added potential of a formalism such as the additive-factors logic of Sternberg (1969, 1975), illustrated in Chapter 4. Other developments of reaction time methodology include the application of information theory (see Chapter 2).

It is customary in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 On the application of psychology
• 2 The information-processing approach
• 3 Faces: their perception and memory
• 4 Design for action
• 5 Mental workload, attention, and performance
• 6 Visual and cognitive aspects of reading
• 7 Applications, implications, and conclusions
• References
• Name index
• Subject index