My dissertation, entitled "Distributed Cognitive Resources: The analysis of human interaction with a complex clinical information system" was supervised by Dr. Vimla L. Patel. I investigated the complexity of clinician interaction with a provider order entry system.
Abstract Computer-assisted provider order entry is a technology that is designed to expedite medical ordering and to reduce the frequency of preventable errors. This work presents a multifaceted cognitive methodology for the characterization of cognitive demands of a complex clinical information system, the Distributed Cognitive Resources framework. The investigation was informed by the distributed resources (DR) model, a novel approach to HCI research designed to describe the dimensions of user interfaces that introduce extraneous cognitive complexity into interaction. This method evaluates the relative distribution of external (system) and internal (user) representations embodied in system interaction as well as the proportion of medical and system-oriented golas and actions. The methodology uses and modifies several techniques from HCI and cognitive science: expert walkthrough evaluation and think-aloud interaction protocols that analyzed simulated clinical ordering task performed by seven clinicians. The DCR model was employed to explain variation in user performance and to characterize the relationship of resource distribution and ordering errors. The analysis showed that the configuration of resources in this ordering application placed unnecessarily heavy cognitive demands on the user, especially on those who lacked a robust conceptual model of the system. The resources model also provided insights into clinicians interactive strategies and patterns of associated errors.
I earned a Master's degree in experimental psychology, studying memory and cognition. My thesis, entitled " The effect of noise on veridical and false recognition in young adults" was supervised by Dr. Patricia Tun and Dr. Arthur Wingfield at the Memory and Cognition Lab. It explored errors in memory recall and recognition as a function of thematic word similarity and distraction. This phenomenon is also known as false memory. Subjects frequently "recognized" a new word on a list as one they had studied previously.
Abstract This study examined the effects of ambient noise on veridical and false memory in young adults. Fifteen Brandeis university undergraduate students participated in an learning and recognition experimental paradigm originated by Deese (1959) and recently revived by Roediger and McDermott (1995). Participants in this within-subject design experiment were presented with sixteen lists of thematically related words (e.g., nurse, hospital, illness, etc.), and four lists of unrelated words, half spoken by a narrator in silence, and half with background babble. Immediate recognition task was given after the first ten lists, and a 15 minute delayed recognition after the second part. Studied words are mixed on the recognition task with thematically related lures that were themselves not given during list presentation. False intrusions occur when a new item is identified as one from the studied list (e.g., the word doctor, etc.) Participants answered YES or NO (word was/was not on the study list) by pressing a button. Results showed a negative effect of noise on veridical recognition, and a robust false memory effect, largely unaffected by noise or delay. Results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of fuzzy-trace theory, and effects of background noise on memory and cognitive impairment are discussed.