Augmented Cognition
The Program
PSE was instrumental in the development, planning, conducting, and analysis of a "Technical Integration Experiment" for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Augmented Cognition program.
The Technical Integration Experiment evaluated 20 psychophysiological measures from 11 different research groups for their ability to detect changes in users' cognitive workload during a complex task.
The measures included functional Near Infra-Red imaging (fNIR), continuous and event-related electrical encephalography (EEG/ERP), pupil dilation, mouse pressure, body posture, heart rate, and galvanic skin response (GSR).
PSE found that eleven of the measures showed empirical promise in their ability to detect changes in cognitive workload on-line in real time.
Warship Commander
These "cognitive state gauges" were evaluated on a common, quasi-realistic, military command and control task called the Warship Commander Task that was developed by PSE specifically for this purpose.
Participants monitored aircraft on a geographical display for their levels of threat and responded to the threatening ones, as they simultaneously monitored ship communications for ship status information.
The task involves a combination of perceptual, motor, spatial, auditory, verbal, memory, and decision-making processing. Task load was manipulated by changing the quantity and types of aircraft appearing throughout the primary task and by varying the presence or absence of the secondary verbal-memory task.
Continuing Research
PSE is again providing scientific consultation on the design and evaluation of integrated "augmented cognition" systems.
The ultimate goal of the program is to develop innovative technologies that will transform human-computer interactions by making information systems adapt to the changing capabilities and limitations of the user.
References and Downloads
St. John, M., Kobus, D. A., & Morrison, J. G. (2002). A multi-tasking environment for manipulating and measuring neural correlates of cognitive workload. In Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE 7th Conference on Human Factors and Power Plants (pp 7.10 - 7.14). New York, NY: IEEE.
Download a paper on Warship Commander and a multi-tasking environment in PDF format
St. John, M., Kobus, D. A., Morrison, J. G., & Schmorrow, D. (2004). Overview of the DARPA Augmented Cognition technical integration experiment. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 17, 131-149.
Download the complete report in PDF format
