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School of Psychology

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70756

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College of Sciences

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Work Science Center

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

Understanding older adults' perceptions of usefulness of an assistive home robot

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-11-21) Beer, Jenay M.

Developing robots that are useful to older adults is more than simply creating robots that complete household tasks. To ensure that older adults perceive a robot to be useful, careful consideration of the users’ capabilities, robot autonomy, and task is needed (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct of perceived usefulness within the context of robot assistance. Mobile older adults (N = 12) and older adults with mobility loss (N=12) participated in an autonomy selection think aloud task, and a persona based interview. Findings suggest that older adults with mobility loss preferred an autonomy level where they command/control the robot themselves. Mobile older adults’ preferences were split between commanding/controlling the robot themselves, or the robot commands/controls itself. Reasons for their preferences were related to decision making, and were task specific. Additionally, findings from the persona base interview study support Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) constructs, as well as adaptability, reliability, and trust as positively correlated with perceptions of usefulness. However, despite the positive correlation, barriers and facilitators of acceptance identified in the interview suggest that perceived usefulness judgments are complex, and some questionnaire constructs were interpreted differently between participants. Thus, care should be taken when applying TAM constructs to other domains, such as robot assistance to promote older adult independence.
Understanding the construct of human trust in domestic service robots

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-11-18) Olson, Katherine E.

Simple robots are already being deployed and adopted by some consumers for use at home. The robots currently in development for home use are far more sophisticated. However, it was not know the extent to which humans would trust them. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that influence trust in domestic service robots across a range of users with different capabilities and experience levels. Twelve younger adults (aged 18-28) and 24 older adults (12 low technology users and 12 high technology users) aged 65-75 participated in a structured interview, card-sorting task, and several questionnaires. Most participants had heard about or seen robots, but indicated they had little experience with them. However, most had positive opinions about robots and indicated they would trust a robot to assist with tasks in their homes, though it was dependent on the task. Before making a decision to trust a robot, participants wanted to know a lot of information about the robot such robot reliability, capabilities, and limitations. When asked to select their trust preference for human versus robot assistance for specific tasks, participants had preferences for both human and robot assistance, although it was dependent on the task. Many participants defined trust in robots similar to definitions of trust in automation (Ezer, 2008; Jian et al., 2000). Additionally, they had high rates of selection for adjectives used to describe trust in automation and also selected some adjectives used to describe trust in humans when asked to select characteristics they most associated with trustworthy and untrustworthy robots. Overall, there were some differences between age and technology experience groups, but there were far more similarities. By carefully considering user needs, robot designers can develop robots that have the potential to be adopted by a wide range of people.
Exploring everyday privacy behaviors and misclosures

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12-08) Caine, Kelly Erinn

As access to information changes with increased use of technology, privacy becomes an increasingly prominent issue among technology users. Privacy concerns should be taken seriously because they influence system adoption, the way a system is used, and may even lead to system disuse. Threats to privacy are not only due to traditional security and privacy issues; human factors issues such as unintentional disclosure of information also influence the preservation of privacy in technology systems. A dual pronged approach was used to examine privacy. First, a broad investigation of younger and older adults' privacy behaviors was conducted. The goal of this study was to gain a better understanding of privacy across technologies, to discover the similarities, and identify the differences in what privacy means across contexts as well as provide a means to evaluate current theories of privacy. This investigation resulted in a categorization of privacy behaviors associated with technology. There were three high level privacy behavior categories identified: avoidance, modification, and alleviatory behavior. This categorization furthers our understanding about the psychological underpinnings of privacy concerns and suggests that 1) common privacy feelings and behaviors exist across people and technologies and 2) alternative designs which consider these commonalities may increase privacy. Second, I examined one specific human factors issue associated with privacy: disclosure error. This investigation focused on gaining an understanding of how to support privacy by preventing misclosure. A misclosure is an error in disclosure. When information is disclosed in error, or misclosed, privacy is violated in that information not intended for a specific person(s) is nevertheless revealed to that person. The goal of this study was to provide a psychological basis for design suggestions for improving privacy in technology which was grounded in empirical findings. The study furthers our understanding about privacy errors in the following ways: First, it demonstrates for the first time that both younger and older adults experience misclosures . Second, it suggests that misclosures occur even when technology is very familiar to the user. Third, it revealed that some misclosure experiences result in negative consequences, suggesting misclosure is a potential threat to privacy. Finally, by exploring the context surrounding each reported misclosure, I was able to propose potential design suggestions that may decrease the likelihood of misclosure.
Is a robot an appliance, teammate, or friend? age-related differences in expectations of and attitudes toward personal home-based robots

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-11-11) Ezer, Neta

Future advances in technology may allow home-based robots to perform complex collaborative activities with individuals of different ages. Two studies were conducted to understand the expectations of and attitudes toward home-based robots by younger and older adults. One study involved questionnaires sent to 2500 younger adults (aged 18-28) and 2500 older adults (aged 65-86) in the Atlanta Metropolitan area. One hundred and eighty questionnaires were completed and returned by individuals in the targeted age groups. For the questionnaire, participants were asked to imagine a robot in their home and then to answer questions about how well characteristics matched their imagined robot. Participants' technology and robot experience, demographic information, and health information were also collected. In conjunction with the questionnaire study, twelve younger adults (aged 19-26) and twenty-four older adults in two sub-age groups (younger-older, aged 65-75, and older-older aged 77-85) were interviewed about their expectations of and attitudes toward a robot in their home. They were asked to imagine a robot in their home and answer numerous questions about the tasks their envisioned robot would perform, the appearance of the robot, and other general questions about their interaction with the robot. The results of the studies suggest that individuals have many different ideas about what a robot in the home would be like. Mostly, they want a robot to perform mundane or repetitive tasks, such as cleaning, and picture a robot as a time-saving device. However, individuals are willing to have a robot perform other types of tasks, if they see benefits of having the robot perform those tasks. The ability of the robot to perform tasks efficiently, with minimal effort on the part of the human, appears to be more important in determining acceptance of the robot than its social ability or appearance. Overall, individuals both younger and older seem to be very open to the idea of a robot in their home as long it is useful and not too difficult to use.
Explaining dual-task implicit learning deficits: the effect of within stimulus presentation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-04-04) Nichols, Timothy A.

Under typical between stimulus dual-task conditions, implicit sequence learning typically suffers, except under within stimulus conditions, where the stimuli for both tasks are the same. This finding is inconclusive, given that it has not been replicated and the study under which it was obtained was methodologically flawed. The finding also seemed to contradict the psychological refractory period finding that simultaneous presentation of the two task stimuli will result in performance decrements. Two experiments were conducted to test the effect of within stimulus presentation in a dual-task implicit learning task. In Experiment 1, within stimulus presentation resulted in improved sequence learning, relative to between stimulus presentation. The second experiment did not show an effect of response selection load under within stimulus presentation conditions. The findings suggest that implicit learning can occur under attentionally demanding conditions, but that the incidental task structure to be learned should be comprised of stimuli that are already attended during primary task processing.
Factors that affect trust and reliance on an automated aid

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-04-03) Sanchez, Julian

Previous research efforts aimed at understanding the relationship between automation reliability and reliance on the automation have mainly focused on a single dimension of reliability, the automations error rate. Efforts to understand the effects of additional dimensions, such as types of errors, have merely provided suggestions about the effects that automation false alarms and misses can have on human behavior). Furthermore, other dimensions of reliability, such as the distribution of errors in time, have been almost completely ignored. A multi-task simulation of an agricultural vehicle was used in this investigation. The simulator was composed of two main tasks, a collision avoidance task and a tracking task. The collision avoidance task was supported by an imperfect automated collision avoidance system and the tracking task was performed manually. The results of this investigation indicated that there are distinct patterns of reliance that develop as a function of error type, which are dependent on the state of the automation (alarms or non-alarms). The different distributions of errors across time had an effect on the estimates of reliability and subjective trust ratings. The recency of errors was negatively related to perceived reliability and trust. The results of the current investigation also suggest that older adults are able to adjust their behavior according to the characteristics of the automation, although it takes them longer to do so. Furthermore, it appears that older adults are willing to use automated systems, as long as they are reliable enough to reduce workload.
An investigation of attention in a consistently mapped auditory detection task

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002-05) Fain, W. Bradley
Aging and inferencing ability : an examination of factors underlying text comprehension

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-08) Hancock, Holly Elizabeth
Contributions of stimulus-driven and goal-directed processing to visual selection by older and younger observers

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000-05) Mead, Sherry E.
An analysis of the influence of order of part task component training on whole task performance

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000-05) Gay, Paul Eugene, Jr.