Georgia Institute of Technology

The SLIDER project is a collaborative effort involving the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC), the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), the School of Psychology, the School of Biomedical Engineering, and the College of Computing at Georgia Tech; the State of Georgia Department of Education; and three Georgia school systems: one urban, one rural, and one suburban. The project is developing and implementing a rigorous eighth grade physical science program that utilizes engineering design, LEGO™ robotics and mechanics, and a problem-based learning approach to teach mechanics, waves, and energy. The project seeks to answer research questions such as: Can research-based physical science instructional materials that use problem-based inquiry learning in the context of engineering design scenarios empower a broad range of middle school learners to learn physical science content and reasoning skills? Can these educational materials lead to increased engagement, motivation, aptitudes, creativity, and interest in STEM fields; if so, does this effect persist as students move into high school? Do students engage with the materials differently depending upon various individual differences? Catrambone's primary responsibility is to conduct task analysis with the robotics experts to identify the knowledge that learners need to acquire. Experts are often unable to articulate the low level knowledge they use to solve problems, so this task analysis effort is a crucial part of the project because it identifies the foundational knowledge that the students should obtain.

The annual Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics was released this fall, edited by Frank Durso. The volume presents chapters reviewing 8 topics of HFE. All of them are "use-inspired basic research". The volume includes reviews of Nursing, Information Visualization, Aviation Automation, Baseball, Expertise, Training, Augmented Cognition, and Human Performance Modeling. "Each of these offerings is a seamless piece of scientific cloth in which there is no stitching that binds the basic and the applied".

Frank Durso was recently appointed to an APA Presidential Task Force to look at 'Psychology as a STEM discipline.' The task force has representatives from Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Houston. Although recognized by NSF as a discipline in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, psychology is often not viewed as a core STEM discipline. The task force will develop strategies for re-defining psychology as a STEM discipline, identify barriers, and develop solutions and partnerships for implementing efforts to advocate effectively for psychology as a STEM discipline to policy makers and elected officials.

Emphasizing causation as a functional relationship between variables that describe objects, Linear Causal Modeling with Structural Equations integrates a general philosophical theory of causation with structural equation modeling (SEM) that concerns the special case of linear causal relations. In addition to describing how the functional relation concept may be generalized to treat probabilistic causation, the book reviews historical treatments of causation and explores recent developments in experimental psychology on studies of the perception of causation. It looks at how to perceive causal relations directly by perceiving quantities in magnitudes and motions of causes that are conserved in the effects of causal exchanges. Stanley Mulaik is a Professor Emeritus at the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech. The book is published by CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group. He also has a second book in press, to be released later this year by the same publisher, Foundations of Factor Analysis, Revised.

Image Attribution: CRC Press

Designing for Older Adults: Principles and Creative Human Factors provides a practical introduction to human factors and the older adult, primarily viewed from an engineering psychology, perspective, drawing on research orientated work. The book is authored by Arthur D. Fisk, Wendy A. Rogers, Neil Charness, Sara J. Czaja, and Joseph Sharit. Fisk and Rogers are the directors of the Human Factors and Aging Lab. At Georgia Tech, human factors and aging is studied from the broad perspective representative of the field of human factors. The Human Factors and Aging Laboratory is specifically oriented toward developing a fundamental understanding of aging, cognition, and attention. The Human Factors and Aging Laboratory is also committed to bringing that fundamental basic knowledge to bear on design issues important to the quality and safety of activities of daily living encountered by older adults. The book is published by CRC Press.

Image Attribution: CRC Press

Dr. Frank Durso was awarded an FAA grant entitled "Situation Management: Workload, Situation Awareness (SA), Performance, and the roles of Strategies and Automation." This research focuses on the cognitive and behavioral components involved in managing dynamic situations, and uses air traffic scenarios as a vehicle for studying those processes. The FAA is responsible for the safety of civil aviation. Most of Durso's current research falls under the labels of applied cognition or cognitive engineering. These research areas address how cognition (e.g., knowledge, expertise, working memory, attention allocation) interacts with environmental components (e.g., technology, the representation of flight data, available automation, patient symptoms, presence of teammates) to affect the operator’s performance, learning, transfer, workload, and situation awareness.

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Nathan Wiita was awarded a Goizueta Foundation Fellowship in 2009. The Goizueta Foundation has provided the Georgia Institute of Technology with an endowment. This endowment is intended to establish programs which are designed to advance students of Hispanic/Latino origin in higher education. The Goizueta Foundation Fellowship is intended to attract those students interested in pursuing doctoral studies at Georgia Tech. Wiita's research interests include leadership and team dynamics, personality, and motivation.

Image Attribution: Portrait of Roberto C. Goizueta by Rossin

Dr. Audrey Duarte was awarded an AFAR grant for studying associative recollection and aging. For 28 years, the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) has supported the science of healthier aging. AFAR has played a major role in providing and advancing knowledge of aging and mechanisms of age-related disease by providing start-up grants to nearly 2,500 early-career scientists. While it has generally been believed that older adults exhibit larger deficits in recollection for contextual details about prior events than in acontextual familiarity, there is evidence to suggest that this is not necessarily the rule in aging. Duarte is interested in investigating how and why these processes are affected in healthy aging.

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Dr. Bruce Walker was awarded an NSF grant entitled "The Accessible Aquarium Project: Access to Dynamic Informal Learning Environments via Advanced Bio-Tracking and Adaptive Sonification". It is a collaborative effort with Psych, Computing, Music, and CATEA. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…" Walker's overarching goal is to ensure that technology is developed with the end user in mind. All aspects of design, implementation, adoption, and use of a system or device can be enhanced by considering the perceptual, cognitive, and social needs and abilities of those who will use it.

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Hi Shin Shim was awarded a CETL Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards for Psychology. With the continuing support of BP America, CETL has honored outstanding Teaching Assistants since 1992. The CETL/BP Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award is the only institute-wide award for Teaching Assistants and symbolizes Georgia Tech’s commitment to promoting exemplary teaching. Shim's research interests include multidimensional item response theory models and their applications to longitudinal assessments and analysis of change.

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Hillary Schwarb was awarded the grand prize in the Georgia Tech institute wide graduate research symposium. The symposium is hosted by the Graduate Student Government and provides students with the chance to learn about what research topics are being studied by graduate students throughout the various colleges at Georgia Tech. Schwarb is interested in implementing both behavioral and cognitive neuroscience techniques to study human cognition. Generally her research focus is on learning and memory as they relate to skill acquisition and multi-task performance.

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Diann Gaalema received one of two 2009 dissertation grants from Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis (SABA). Awarded through the Association for Behavior Analysis International® (ABA International®) is a nonprofit professional membership organization with the mission to contribute to the well-being of society by developing, enhancing, and supporting the growth and vitality of the science of behavior analysis through research, education, and practice. For her dissertation work, Gaalema is attempting to use sexual conditioning to improve breeding outcomes in South American frogs.

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