Team situation awareness within the context of human-autonomy teaming

Effective team communication, a fundamental part of team coordination, is crucial for both effective Team Situation Awareness (TSA) and team performance. In this study, we looked at the role that team interaction (i.e., more specifically team verbal behaviors) played in TSA and team performance in order to better understand Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT). We first analyzed team verbal behaviors (i.e., pushing and pulling information) across conditions of human-autonomy teams and human-human teams, and then analyzed their relationship with TSA and team performance via Growth Curve Modelling (GCM). Good teamwork involves anticipating the needs of teammates and that means pushing information before it is requested. Therefore, if things are going well, there should be little need for pulling information. In this study’s task, participants were instructed to push information to others, and over time master the specific timing of information sharing to the intended recipient. Findings indicate that pushing information was positively associated with TSA and team performance, and human-autonomy teams had lower levels of both pushing and pulling information than all-human teams. Through this study, we have learned that anticipation of other team member behaviors and information requirements in human-autonomy teams are important for effective TSA and team performance. In order to make HAT more effective in terms of teamwork, we need to develop mechanisms to enhance pushing information within HAT.     

Two Russellian Arguments for Acquaintance

Bertrand Russell [1912] argued that we are acquainted with our experiences. Although this conclusion has generated a lot of discussion, very little has been said about Russell's actual arguments for it. This paper aims to remedy that. I start by spelling out two Russellian arguments for acquaintance. Then I show that these arguments cannot both succeed. For if one is sound, the other isn't. Finally, I weigh our options with respect to these arguments, and defend one option in particular. I argue that we have good reason to believe that we can be, and sometimes are, acquainted with our experiences.     

Ecobiopsychology

The latest scientific discoveries acknowledge that the universe, from the atom to the galaxies, is a system behaving as a whole where each single set composing it seems informed by the global state of the system. In-formation can be exemplified as a “software” governing the “hardware” that is composed of the objects of the universe. This in formation comes from an Akashic Field or archetypal field that can breed each single form as well as the relevant states of consciousness. Ecobiopsychology, through the study of vital analogies and symbols, supports reflective consciousness to have access to the archetypal field studying the relation between the aspects of matter (infrared) and those referred to the psyche (ultraviolet). With this perspective the human's reflective consciousness field can gradually expand until becoming accessible to the reality of the Unus Mundus, represented by the coherence of the single structures of the universe and their own embedded state of implicit consciousness.     

The missing pieces in the scientific study of bodily awareness

Research on bodily awareness has focused on body illusions with an aim to explore the possible dissociation of our bodily awareness from our own body. It has provided insights into how our sensory modalities shape our sense of embodiment, and it has raised important questions regarding the malleability of our sense of ownership over our own body. The issue, however, is that this research fails to consider an important distinction in how we experience our body. There are indeed two ways in which we can be aware of our body: via observational awareness, which involves attending to the body as an object, and via non-observational awareness, where the body is given as the subject of experience and does not involve attention. The research to date has focused on the former—observational bodily awareness—and has left the latter—non-observational bodily awareness—in the dark. This is detrimental to ever formulating a complete account of how we are aware of our body. It is understandable, however, because of the inherent problem in studying non-observational bodily awareness: how would you instruct subjects to report on their unattended bodily awareness? In view to resolving this problem, I propose here a working hypothesis on the basis of research on interoception and the rubber hand illusion, and on the effect of meditation on awareness and attention. This working hypothesis can show us a way to begin studying non-observational bodily awareness, and finally build a complete theory of bodily awareness.     

A response to Martina and Wimmer’s review of The Given

In this paper I respond to Martina and Wimmer’s review of The Given, focusing on their criticisms of the awareness of awareness thesis.     

Mindfulness and mind wandering: The protective effects of brief meditation in anxious individuals

Mind wandering can be costly, especially when we are engaged in attentionally demanding tasks. Preliminary studies suggest that mindfulness can be a promising antidote for mind wandering, albeit the evidence is mixed. To better understand the exact impact of mindfulness on mind wandering, we had a sample of highly anxious undergraduate students complete a sustained-attention task during which off-task thoughts including mind wandering were assessed. Participants were randomly assigned to a meditation or control condition, after which the sustained-attention task was repeated. In general, our results indicate that mindfulness training may only have protective effects on mind wandering for anxious individuals. Meditation prevented the increase of mind wandering over time and ameliorated performance disruption during off-task episodes. In addition, we found that the meditation intervention appeared to promote a switch of attentional focus from the internal to present-moment external world, suggesting important implications for treating worrying in anxious populations.     

情绪感染的发生机制

原始性情绪感染理论认为, 情绪感染是一个“情绪觉察-无意识模仿-生理反馈-情绪体验”的过程, 情绪感染是一个由生理诱发情绪的过程。早在1884年, 詹姆士和兰格就提出了情绪外周学说, 同样描述了从身体变化到情绪变化的关系路径, 但没有描述从刺激事件到外周身体变化的发生机制。对情绪感染的发生机制的研究能揭示这一“自下而上”的情绪产生机制。研究选取有效大学生被试62名, 参与下列研究：(1) 在眼动实验中使用情绪图片作为感官情绪信息, 以考察觉察者的情绪觉察水平。(2) 在生物反馈实验中, 使用仿真课堂教学视频作为感官情绪信息, 以考察觉察者的无意识模仿水平和生理反馈水平。使用路径分析证实了情绪感染的路径机制, 在真实情境的诱发下, 这种通过生理唤醒而诱发情绪的机制是可能的。     

Determining Decision Values of Context Awareness in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Research on context‐aware computing has been focusing on the technology aspect of context acquisition and interpretation of users' surrounding environment or physical context. There is no operational mechanism for integrating context awareness that is driven by user context such as users' ongoing activities and tasks. Although the necessity of integration of sensed context data with users' intent of conduct has been recognized by many researchers, it has never been empirically investigated. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process, we propose an integrated and comprehensive approach that takes into consideration both user and physical context in defining overall context awareness value. The approach is tested using secondary data of user activities in various situations and surrounding environment scenarios. The results suggest several preliminary guidelines for determining representative measures of user and physical context approaches in the design and evaluation of context‐aware systems. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the role of attention in generating explicit awareness of contingent relations: evidence from spatial priming

In a series of four experiments, we examine the hypothesis that selective attention is crucial for the generation of conscious knowledge of contingency information. We investigated this question using a spatial priming task in which participants were required to localize a target letter in a probe display. In Experiment 1, participants kept track of the frequency with which the predictive letter in the prime appeared in various locations. This manipulation had a negligible impact on contingency awareness. Subsequent experiments requiring participants to attend to features (color, location) of the predictive letter increased contingency awareness somewhat, but there remained a large proportion of individuals who remained unaware of the strong contingency. Together the results of our experiments suggest that the construct of attention does not fully capture the processes that lead to contingency awareness, and suggest a critical role for bottom-up feature integration in explicit contingency learning.     

词汇语音学习的影响因素

摘要 词汇语音的学习受哪些因素的影响是心理语言学研究中一个重要的问题。语音回路理论认为,语音短时记忆在词汇语音的学习过程中发挥着关键性的作用,语音短时记忆能力越好越有助于词汇的学习;语音敏感性假说认为,语音意识是影响儿童词汇发展及学习的重要因素;另外一些研究者认为,语音知识可能发挥着更为基础和关键的作用,最近的研究则更加强调几种因素如何相互作用影响词汇语音的学习。本文最后提出了该领域需要进一步研究的问题。