Cognitive Psychology and Careers

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Cognitive Psychology and Careers

• Colleen Kelley

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Cognitive Psychology How the mind works.

• Attention
• Memory
• Judgment and Decision Making
• Language and Reading
• Problem Solving

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Attention

• See whether you can detect anything changing in
  this scene.

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Memory
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Suggestions with photos

• Wade et al. (2002) Ss see pictures from
  childhood (one doctored).

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Doctored photo study

• Interviewed 3 times encouraged to generate
  details.

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Judgment and Decision Making

• Imagine that you serve on the jury of an
  only-child sole-custody case following a
  relatively messy divorce. The facts of the case
  are complicated by ambiguous economic, social,
  and emotional considerations, and you decide to
  base your decision on the following few
  observations.
• To which parent do you award sole custody of the
  child? To which parent do you deny sole custody
  of the child?

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Choosing vs. Rejecting

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Choosing vs. Rejecting

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Choosing vs. Rejecting

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Specialties at FSU

• Expertise
• Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Paul Ward

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Expertise

• Ericsson Little support for talent view
• Key Deliberate Practice
• Amount of Deliberate Practice predicts
  performance.
• 10 year rule

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Deliberate Practice

• 4 hours a day for musicians (7 days)
• Practice an hour, rest
• Morning practice
• Big emphasis on enough sleep and rest

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Other Specialties at FSU

• Language and Reading (Florida Center for Reading
  Research
• Rick Wagner, Chris Schatschneider, Ralph Radach
• How children learn to read, who is at risk, what
  predicts that?
• Language processing in adults
• Mike Kaschak

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Other Specialties at FSU

• Attention
• Ralph Radach
• Memory
• Colleen Kelley
• Aging and Technology
• Neil Charness

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Ph.D Academic Careers

• Psychology
• Joint JD/PH.D work in law schools
• Business schools
• School of Education (Educational Psychology
  specialty)

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Work in Human Factors

• Hewlett Packard
• Microsoft
• Lucent Technologies
• Video-game makers

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What is Human Factors?

• The Third Brake Light
• HUD (Head-Up Display)
• Reach Toothbrush

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What is the purpose of Human Factors?

• Reduce error
• Increase safety
• Assist critical decision making
• Improve performance
• Increase reliability
• Improve training

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Design and Evaluation

• High Tech
• Aerospace
• Automobile
• Military
• Consumer products.

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• Amanda Hafich, FSU psychology BS in December,
  2002
• Took cognitive psychology, DIS in cognitive.
• Working for CHI Systems. (national company, San
  Diego, Orlando, Philadelphia).
• Says job is AWESOME

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Projects

• Creating a common instructor operator system, a
  virtual system for training people to fly planes
  such as F 18.
• Evaluating a training system for the Marine
  Corps.

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Cognitive Task Analysis

• Interview experts
• How do they do their job?
• What creates high stress?
• When are mistakes made?
• Redesign, reorganize work station.

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Case Study BS and Human Factors

• Within 6 months I knew how to fly a satellite
  and how to train a navy pilot.

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• Lots of travel, California, navy bases on some
  projects.
• Already presented paper at professional
  conference.
• Started in the mid 40,000s
• Ph.D. entering around 70K,
• management around 150,000.

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Other projects in company (CHI)

• Training agents, virtual tutors, simulation based
  training
• Performance support agents (virtual mentors).
• Improve human work and performance.

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Advice from Amanda

• Take Cognitive, work in a lab.
• Take a computer programming course
• minor in computer or mechanical engineering. She
  just started Masters program at the University of
  Central Florida.
• Avoid committing felonies lots of defense work,
  need clearance.

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Resources

• CHI PA and FL offer graduate and, in some cases,
  undergraduate internships (PA year-round and FL
  during summer)
• CHI periodically has classes on the use of iGEN,
  our cognitive modeling tool
• Website www.chisystems.com
• Email Amanda ahafich_at_chisystems.com
• Website http//www.hfes.org/
• (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society)