Older Adults
Younger AdultsAutomation
Effect of Perceived Consequence on Automation Reliance
Contact Person: Neta Ezer
This project looks at the factors that influence peoples' trust in automation, specifically the type of automation known as a decision aid, which gives the person a suggested action that the person can decide to follow or not follow. This choice, to agree or not agree with the decision aid's suggestion, may be influenced by what is at risk if the suggestion is wrong and a mistake is made. It may also be influenced by the costs involved in seeking out additional information that could confirm or disconfirm what the decision aid is suggesting. Essentially, the person must balance the benefits and costs of following the suggestion of the decision aid versus not following it. The results of this study could potentially guide the design of automation placed in high-risk situations so that people will be able to use the automation appropriately.
Preliminary results suggest that people tend to have more trust in their own abilities, rather than in the abilities of a decision aid, when there is a relatively high cost of making a mistake. When the cost of checking an aid's suggestion is high, people tend to agree with the suggestion of the aid more frequently.
Effect of Workload on Automation Dependence
Contact Person: Sara McBride
Current literature suggests that older adults typically depend on automation to a greater degree because they experience greater mental workload as compared to younger adults. However, this claim has not been systematically investigated. In this study, we will manipulate mental workload so that participants either experience low, moderate, or high workload. Our investigation hopes to determine whether there are any age differences in terms of dependence across the three workload groups, as well as whether individuals change their dependence strategies over time. Data collection is underway.
Role of User Expectations in Human-Automation Interaction
Contact Person: Andrew Mayer
As people interact with automated systems they develop general expectations about automation performance, however; it is unclear how these expectations affect reliance. The purpose of this study is to investigate how peoples’ expectations of automation performance influence reliance and how expectations interact with automation errors. More specifically, I am interested in how user reliance changes as a function of level of user expectations, type of automation errors, and time. Data collection is underway.
Healthcare
Health-care Provider/Patient Communication
Contact Person: Jamye Hickman
The goal of this study is to understand what kinds of difficulties people have when they are trying to communicate with their health care provider (e.g., doctor, nurse, pharmacist). Understanding what difficulties people have during communication and how they may solve them will help us understand how technology can assist in successful communication between patients and their health care providers. Preliminary results indicate that many of the reported strategies used by older adults are implemented after a communication failure has occurred. The best solution to communication problems is in the realm of prevention rather then correction. Currently we are developing guidelines to assist older adults in the prevention of communication problems.
Robotics/Virtual Agents
Recognizing Facial Expressions of Virtual Agents and Robots
Contact Person: Jenay Beer
Traditionally, robots and virtual agents have been developed in the context of military and industry domains. However, more recent improvements in technology have allowed for agents to be developed for home and healthcare settings. Making better agents is not only about improving technology. It is crucial to understand issues related to social characteristics of agents that promote optimal interaction. Facial expressions are one of the most important mediums for communicating emotional state. The goal of this study is to better understand how people recognize and label emotions displayed by an agent.
Training and Instruction
Training and Understanding the Structure of the System
Contact Person: Jamye Hickman
While living and working in today's high-tech world, the ability to perform tasks and understand the system structure of technology may affect our lives in many ways. For example, calibrating a medical device such as a blood glucose meter may be performed only infrequently but an adequate knowledge of the system structure may be critical for doing it correctly. The goal of this project is to understand how training effects learning and an understanding of the system structure. With the ever-increasing prevalence of these complex systems in everyday domains such as medical care, communication, transportation, and entertainment, understanding the system structure may potentially result in a better quality of life. The first study in this project is complete. The results suggests that training providing directions about general system concepts may lead to the development of a better understanding of the system structure compared to training focused on specific system procedures. The second study is in the planning stage.
Technology Use
Age Differences in Technologies Used
Contact Person: Marita O'Brien
Previous analysis of the CREATE I data has shown age differences in the use of computers and technology. Yet, the studies do not clearly depict why and when there are age-related differences in computer and technology use. By reviewing the CREATE II data, we will describe technology use for older and younger adults with a focus on technology type, frequency of use, and domain of use.
Data is being collected and analyzed.
Privacy in an Aware Home
Contact Person: Kelly Caine
Older adults in particular stand to benefit from new technologies that use visual sensing devices to collect and share information about residents of smart or aware homes like Georgia Tech's Aware Home. However, there is little research that explores the privacy concerns older adults may have when choosing whether to use these technologies in their homes. The goal of this study is to examine any potential privacy concerns that older adults may have about using visual sensing devices in their home as well as factors that may mitigate those concerns.
Data collection is complete and analysis is underway.
Technology Use by Older Adults
Contact Person: Tracy Mitzner
Technology has the potential to improve the quality of life of older adults and to provide support for age-associated declines. We are conducting focus groups to better understand the needs and preferences of older adults concerning technology and technology training. The focus groups are being conducted at three sites: Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida State University, and University of Miami. We are asking older adults which technology items they use and the frequency with which they use them, what they like and dislike about each item, what type of training they think is best for each item, for what tasks they need training, and what methods of training they think would be useful to learn each task. Our goal is to gather information about older adults’ experiences with technology in their everyday lives to provide a basis for research to examine potential technology design and training improvements. We found that older adults are using a wide variety of technologies, particularly in their homes. Moreover, older adults reported more likes than dislike of technology. The most frequent reasons provided for liking technology included convenience, features, and support for activities. The most frequent reasons reported for disliking technology included inconvenience and concerns about security and reliability. The likes and dislikes reported by older adults in this study can be used by designers to make technologies that are more apt to meet the needs and preferences of older adults thereby making technology adoption more likely.
The training data are currently in the analysis stage.
Fundamentals of Aging
Age Differences in the Effects of Poor Contrast on Reading Strategies
Contact Person:Tracy Mitzner
This research is directed toward understanding age differences in reading strategies, particularly those used when text is difficult to read due to poor contrast (e.g., when dark text is printed on a dark background). Our findings can guide text writers and designers about factors that facilitate reading for older adults. Our results revealed that older adults were affected to a greater extent compared to younger adults when reading text that was presented with poor contrast. Moreover, neither younger nor older adults were able to compensate for the poor viewing conditions by taking advantage of contextual information contained in the text.
Knowledge Modification
Contact Person: Anne Adams
Research has shown that over time, we tend to revert to old-held beliefs in light of new information which contradict our beliefs. With this study we investigated whether this reversal trend will also be observed when the initial information is only recently acquired. The goal is to determine interventions that will counteract and enhance recall of new, contradicting information when this becomes important, as for example, we receive new information from health care professionals about how to treat an illness.
Current results suggest that much of the contradiction was retained by both younger and older adults. However, some of the initial information resurfaced and more so for older adults than younger adults. Interestingly, both age groups did recall a combined version of old and new information.
Understanding Inferences
Contact Person: Anne Adams
The goal of this study is to understand how people of different ages approach the task of understanding and evaluating short text passages. Data collection is underway.
Display Design
Designing More Effective Visual Displays
Contact Person: Cara Bailey Fausset
Many different situations require displays that can encompass a variety of information and display that information clearly and effectively in a limited display area. The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the different design principles that can aid in the extraction of different types of information from a display in a complex environment. Data collection is underway.
Virtual Keyboard Design
Contact Person: Marita O'Brien
Although entering text may seem like an ordinary and simple task, it can be quite complicated to do with the variety of devices that have been introduced into our everyday lives. We are interested in helping designers keep this task effortless by better understanding the factors involved in text entry when using a novel device. Study 1: We found that the compatibility between keyboard shape and input device facilitates good movement performance. Visual search performance was best on the Alphabetic arrangement across age groups and keyboard shapes. Letter arrangement affected visual search performance when the shape was familiar with that performance. Interestingly, older adults and younger adults differed in how shape affected their performance.
Study 2: Neither shape was faster, but results suggest that more salient features on one shape facilitated performance, particularly for older adults.
