From the Publisher:
Written by the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia, this book provides an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. Special features: emphasizes cost-effective methods that will help developers improve their user interfaces immediately, shows you how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects, provides step-by-step information about which methods to use at various stages during the development life cycle, and offers information on the unique issues relating to informational usability. You do not need to have previous knowledge of usability to implement the methods provided, yet all of the latest research is covered.

Usability Engineering

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

There has been substantial interest in mindfulness as an approach to reduce cognitive vulnerability to stress and emotional distress in recent years. However, thus far mindfulness has not been defined operationally. This paper describes the results of recent meetings held to establish a consensus on mindfulness and to develop conjointly a testable operational definition. We propose a two-component model of mindfulness and specify each component in terms of specific behaviors, experiential manifestations, and implicated psychological processes. We then address issues regarding temporal stability and situational specificity and speculate on the conceptual and operational distinctiveness of mindfulness. We conclude this paper by discussing implications for instrument development and briefly describing our own approach to measurement.

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Mindfulness : A proposed operational definition

I present an account of the origins and development of the multicomponent approach to working memory, making a distinction between the overall theoretical framework, which has remained relatively stable, and the attempts to build more specific models within this framework. I follow this with a brief discussion of alternative models and their relationship to the framework. I conclude with speculations on further developments and a comment on the value of attempting to apply models and theories beyond the laboratory studies on which they are typically based.

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Working Memory: Theories, Models, and Controversies

The author reviews research showing that repetitive thought (RT) can have constructive or unconstructive consequences. The main unconstructive consequences of RT are (a) depression, (b) anxiety, and (c) difficulties in physical health. The main constructive consequences of RT are (a) recovery from upsetting and traumatic events, (b) adaptive preparation and anticipatory planning, (c) recovery from depression, and (d) uptake of health-promoting behaviors. Several potential principles accounting for these distinct consequences of RT are identified within this review: (a) the valence of thought content, (b) the intrapersonal and situational context in which RT occurs, and (c) the level of construal (abstract vs. concrete processing) adopted during RT. Of the existing models of RT, it is proposed that an elaborated version of the control theory account provides the best theoretical framework to account for its distinct

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Constructive and Unconstructive Repetitive Thought.

Part 1: The Problem, Some Evidence, Previous Answers. Negative Thinking and Depression. Effects of Depressed Mood on the Accessibility of Autobiographical Memories. Bower's Associative Network Theory of Mood and Memory and its Applications to Depression. Evaluating the Associative Network Model of Mood Memory. Part 2: The Interacting Cognitive Subsystems ICS Approach. The ICS Framework. Two Levels of Meaning and their Interaction. ICS and Emotion. Part 3: ICS and Mood-Congruous Cognition in the Laboratory. ICS, Mood and Memory. ICS and Mood-congruous Memory. Mood Effects on Evaluative Judgement. Part 4: Negative Thinking and the Maintenance of Depression. The ICS Account. Negative Thought Production and the Maintenance of Depression - The Evidence. ICS and Self-regulatory, Motivational Models of Depression. Part 5: ICS, Depression and Psychological Treatment. ICS and Beck's Cognitive Theory of Depression. Psychological Treatment for Depression - the ICS Perspective. Part 6: Afterword. Applicable Theory - A Puzzle in Three Dimensions.

Affect, Cognition and Change: Re-Modelling Depressive Thought

Interacting Cognitive Subsytems (ICS) is a comprehensive systemic model of the organisation and function of the resources underlying human cognition. in this paper we use ICS to provide a conceptua...

Interacting cognitive subsystems: A systemic approach to cognitive-affective interaction and change

A significant proportion of early HCI research was guided by one very clear vision: that the existing theory base in psychology and cognitive science could be developed to yield engineering tools for use in the interdisciplinary context of HCI design. While interface technologies and heuristic methods for behavioral evaluation have rapidly advanced in both capability and breadth of application, progress toward deeper theory has been modest, and some now believe it to be unnecessary. A case is presented for developing new forms of theory, based around generic “systems of interactors.” An overlapping, layered structure of macro- and microtheories could then serve an explanatory role, and could also bind together contributions from the different disciplines. Novel routes to formalizing and applying such theories provide a host of interesting and tractable problems for future basic research in HCI.

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Systems, interactions, and macrotheory

Depression and dysphoric mood states are often accompanied by quantitative or qualitative shifts in performance across a range of retention tasks. This study focuses on the recollection of both autobiographical events and word lists in dysphoric states. Recollection occurs when people are aware of some contextual detail allied to the encoding experience. This study establishes the presence of a recollection deficit in dysphoria in two distinct paradigms. In both autobiographical recall and in recognition memory, recollection in a dysphoric group was at lower levels than recollection in matched controls. The study examines the hypothesis that the extent of recollection is influenced by two factors: (1) the degree of differentiation of schematic mental models; and (2) the executive mode that predominates when memory tasks are carried out, with the latter assumed to be altered by rumination. The relationship between responses based on recollection and alternative mnemonic responses could be predicted by measures of these two factors. The results are discussed in terms of the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems model (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993) and the perspective it offers on the relationship between meaning systems and executive functions (Barnard, 1999).

Recollection deficits in dysphoric mood: an effect of schematic models and executive mode?

To tackle problems of human-computer interaction the traditional scope of humanmachine studies needs extending to include the complex cognitive skills of understanding, communication and problem solving. This extension requires a fusion of the conceptual and empirical tools of human factors with those of cognitive psychology. A methodological approach to this fusion is outlined as a background for three studies of structured human-.computer dialogue. The studies involved a task in which secret messages were decoded in a number of discrete steps corresponding to computer commands. Each “command” required two numeric arguments. The study investigated underlying variables using questionnaire techniques in addition to user performance in an interactive version of the task. Three factors concerning the order of arguments in a command string were investigated: the consistent positioning of a recurrent argument, the relationship between argument entry order and their order in natural language, and the relationship between argument entry order and the position of argument values on a VDU. In Study I software specialists were asked to design command structures for the task and to give reasons for their choices. In Study II naive subjects were asked to choose between telegrams in which alternative argument orders were expressed in terms of alternative word orders. In the interactive version of the task, used in Study III, positionally consistent systems were most readily learned, but this depended on having the recurrent argument in the first position. With positionally inconsistent systems there were reliable effects due to the position of the direct object of individual command verbs.

Philip J. Barnard

Papers

Affect, Cognition and Change: Re-Modelling Depressive Thought

Interacting cognitive subsystems: A systemic approach to cognitive-affective interaction and change

Systems, interactions, and macrotheory

Recollection deficits in dysphoric mood: an effect of schematic models and executive mode?

Consistency and compatibility in human-computer dialogue