The goal structure of situations

An empirical method for analysing the goal structure within and between persons in different social situations is described. The method involves establishing the main goals of occupants of situational roles and then finding out how the different goals inter-relate in terms of degree and type/direction of conflict and compatibility. Principal components analyses were carried out on ratings of importance of goals of those in different situational roles. Criteria of high factor loadings combined with high mean importance ratings were used to produce the main higher order goals for each of the roles. The goals for the six roles studied were, in each case except one: social acceptance/developing relationships, own well being and achieving a specific situational task goal. However, the precise nature of these goals is rather different in the different situations. Inter-relationship of goals was studied using ratings of conflict or compatibility between pairs of goals within and across roles of each situation. The results were used to describe the goal structures of the different situations. The situation with the most conflict between goals was, as expected, the complaint. Ways were suggested in which knowledge of the goal structure, particularly the points of conflict, could help with skilful handling of potentially difficult social situations.     

Word familiarity and retention

These experiments examine the relationship between subjects' familiarity judgements of words of similar (low) frequency and their recall or recognition of these words. The expected relationship between familiarity and recall was well confirmed, as was the less expected relationship between familiarity and recognition. An analysis of the vocabulary acquisition process led to more specific predictions about performance on delayed, as compared with immediate, retention tests. The most crucial of these predictions was that words which are familiar, but whose meanings are not known, are remembered by tagging sets of phonological (as opposed to semantic) features, leading to good immediate recall but poor delayed recall, and a greater likelihood of acoustic confusions following a delay. Some support was obtained for these predictions. However, subjects showed unexpectedly good retention of unknown words and it was felt that tagging alone does not account for all the findings.     

Movement refractoriness: The influence of response structure and speed

In the first experiment, refractoriness of a primary arm swing was studied using two movement speeds and three secondary responses (reversal, contralateral and ipsilateral thumb-lift). Pre-movement inter-stimulus intervals were 100, 200 or 300 msec and response-stimulus intervals ranged from zero to 200 msec. Accelerometers provided kinematic data. The second experiment repeated the reversal condition with the addition of EMG analysis.The prediction that the maximal speed condition would show a general intensification of control processes, and thus less refractoriness as compared to submaximal speed, was upheld for all response conditions. The findings also supported the prediction that the pattern of refractoriness depends on the functional relationships of the muscles concerned.The EMG analysis revealed that while the sequencing of muscle action was unchanged with movement speed, its phasing characterized the shifts in response metrics. The overall findings emphasize the need to view the refractoriness phenomenon in the context of anatomical and mechanical consequences of force changes in controlling limb movement as they interact with intentional command.     

STAR: A unique embedded performance assessment technique

STAR (The Strategic and Tactical Assessment Record) is a versatile research tool designed to evaluate the effects of sustained performance and other stressors on integrated, complex cognitive functioning. This completely automated task is presented in the form of a highly motivating computer game. However, unlike typical computer games, successful performance of STAR depends on an individual’s ability to rapidly and accurately assess risk/benefit ratios in a variety of situations, and on the skilled use of an array of multipurpose control systems. STAR is unique in that approximately 80 performance measures are unobtrusively embedded in the operations required to “play the game”; no obvious performance assessment interferes with task presentation. STAR provides multiple measures of psychomotor function, attention, memory, information processing, decision making, risk-taking behavior, subjective state, errors, and error paths. In this report, we describe STAR, and summarize two preliminary experiments designed to separately evaluate the effects of task difficulty and task stress level on complex performance.