Thomas Ferris - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Thomas Ferris

The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology

Innovation in Aging

The first speaker is Dr. Thomas Ferris the Center Director of the NSF Center for Health Organizat... more The first speaker is Dr. Thomas Ferris the Center Director of the NSF Center for Health Organization Transformation (CHOT). Dr. Ferris will provide a high-level overview of CHOT and provide the audience with a greater understanding of its history, funding, partners, and accomplishments. In this section, the mission, annual research model, and the I/UCRC planning integration framework will be reviewed and discussed. The NSF CHOT is the only Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) focused on innovations in healthcare delivery in the nation. CHOT researchers work alongside the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to conduct research that supports the implementation of evidence-based transformational strategies within the healthcare sector. During this symposium, Dr. Ferris will discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that can arise from these partnerships. More importantly, in this section will speak to how value is created through these collaborative efforts and how...

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting

In the long-haul trucking industry, the turnover rate for drivers has been consistently near or h... more In the long-haul trucking industry, the turnover rate for drivers has been consistently near or higher than 100% for many years (Fournier, Lamontagne, & Gagnon, 2012; LeMay, Williams, & Garver, 2009). There are many complexlyinteracting contributors to this high rate, including competition among industry members for the short supply of qualified drivers, characteristics of driving assignments, family needs, and interpersonal relationships among coworkers. Several costs to trucking companies are associated with a driver quitting their current position, including lost profit, underutilization of equipment, training costs, insurance investments, and

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care

This research addresses a major issue that is receiving growing attention in neonatal intensive c... more This research addresses a major issue that is receiving growing attention in neonatal intensive care: the importance of uninterrupted sleep to promote healthy cognitive and physical development for NICU patients. This issue is addressed by targeting classic human factors problems with alarms in critical care environments. The focus of this research is in the intersection between alarm problems and problems related to unnecessary disruption of patients’ sleep. An observational study is currently underway at a major metropolitan hospital to document the relationship between alarms and sleep/wake state, highlighting characteristics of alarms and contexts when sleep is disrupted due to clinically insignificant/inactionable alarms and also when nurses’ response to the alarms leads to them intentionally waking the patients when it is unnecessary to do so. Methods for this work are discussed in detail, and preliminary anecdotal findings suggest that apnea and bradycardia are some of the mo...

Scientific Data

We describe a multimodal dataset acquired in a controlled experiment on a driving simulator. The ... more We describe a multimodal dataset acquired in a controlled experiment on a driving simulator. The set includes data for n = 68 volunteers that drove the same highway under four different conditions: No distraction, cognitive distraction, emotional distraction, and sensorimotor distraction. The experiment closed with a special driving session, where all subjects experienced a startle stimulus in the form of unintended acceleration-half of them under a mixed distraction, and the other half in the absence of a distraction. During the experimental drives key response variables and several explanatory variables were continuously recorded. The response variables included speed, acceleration, brake force, steering, and lane position signals, while the explanatory variables included perinasal electrodermal activity (EDA), palm EDA, heart rate, breathing rate, and facial expression signals; biographical and psychometric covariates as well as eye tracking data were also obtained. This dataset enables research into driving behaviors under neatly abstracted distracting stressors, which account for many car crashes. The set can also be used in physiological channel benchmarking and multispectral face recognition. Design Type(s) cross over design • parallel group design Measurement Type(s) imaging assay • physiological assay Technology Type(s) digital camera • data acquisition system Factor Type(s) age • biological sex • experimental condition Sample Characteristic(s) Homo sapiens

List of Equations Equation 2.1: Metric for dual-task performance in conditions which paired visua... more List of Equations Equation 2.1: Metric for dual-task performance in conditions which paired visual-task V (Spatial or Nonspatial) and tactile icons defined by encoding method t

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2015

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2012

Determining the most effective modality or combination of modalities for presenting time sensitiv... more Determining the most effective modality or combination of modalities for presenting time sensitive information to operators in complex environments is critical to effective display design. This panel of display design experts will briefly review empirically based work regarding the key issues to be considered including the temporal demands of the situation, the complexity of the information to be presented and issues of information reliability and trust. Included in the discussion will be a focus on the relative benefits and potential costs of providing information in one modality versus another. Key issues to be discussed among panelists and audience members will be the implications of the existing knowledge for facilitating the design of alerts and warnings in complex environments such as aviation, driving, medicine and educational settings.

IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 2010

The distribution of tasks and stimuli across multiple modalities has been proposed as a means to ... more The distribution of tasks and stimuli across multiple modalities has been proposed as a means to support multitasking in data-rich environments. Recently, the tactile channel and, more specifically, communication via the use of tactile/haptic icons have received considerable interest. Past research has examined primarily the impact of concurrent task modality on the effectiveness of tactile information presentation. However, it is not well known to what extent the interpretation of iconic tactile patterns is affected by another attribute of information: the information processing codes of concurrent tasks. In two driving simulation studies (n ¼ 25 for each), participants decoded icons composed of either spatial or nonspatial patterns of vibrations (engaging spatial and nonspatial processing code resources, respectively) while concurrently interpreting spatial or nonspatial visual task stimuli. As predicted by Multiple Resource Theory, performance was significantly worse (approximately 5-10 percent worse) when the tactile icons and visual tasks engaged the same processing code, with the overall worst performance in the spatial-spatial task pairing. The findings from these studies contribute to an improved understanding of information processing and can serve as input to multidimensional quantitative models of timesharing performance. From an applied perspective, the results suggest that competition for processing code resources warrants consideration, alongside other factors such as the naturalness of signal-message mapping, when designing iconic tactile displays. Nonspatially encoded tactile icons may be preferable in environments which already rely heavily on spatial processing, such as car cockpits.

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2014

Vibrotactile communication technologies are viable candidates for the replacement of more traditi... more Vibrotactile communication technologies are viable candidates for the replacement of more traditional radio communication technologies, particularly in domains where visual and auditory resources are either inconvenient or in high demand. Of particular interest is the potential for improved speeded communications, to allow those directing to directly steer their target rather than describing their intentions. This study evaluated the potential performance of a simple vibrotactile gesture system versus a radio communication control condition, continuing the research paradigm of a previous study by expanding potential response options. However, results indicate faster responses for the control condition, suggesting the need for further modification of the research paradigm to reduce participant awareness of evaluation points and improve communication feedback.

Human Factors in Aviation, 2010

Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2008

Objectives: This study sought to determine whether performance effects of crossmodal spatial link... more Objectives: This study sought to determine whether performance effects of crossmodal spatial links that were observed in earlier laboratory studies scale to more complex environments and need to be considered in multimodal interface design. It also revisits the unresolved issue of cross-modal cuing asymmetries. Background: Previous laboratory studies employing simple cues, tasks, and/or targets have demonstrated that the efficiency of processing visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli is affected by the modality, lateralization, and timing of surrounding cues. Very few studies have investigated these cross-modal constraints in the context of more complex environments to determine whether they scale and how complexity affects the nature of crossmodal cuing asymmetries. Method: A microworld simulation of battlefield operations with a complex task set and meaningful visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli was used to investigate cuing effects for all cross-modal pairings. Results: Signific...

Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2011

A novel vibrotactile display type was investigated to determine the potential benefits for suppor... more A novel vibrotactile display type was investigated to determine the potential benefits for supporting the attention and task management of anesthesiologists. Recent research has shown physiological monitoring and multitasking performance can benefit from displaying patient data via alarm-like tactile notifications and via continuously informing auditory displays (e.g., sonifications). The current study investigated a novel combination of these two approaches: continuously informing tactile displays. A tactile alarm and two continuously informing tactile display designs were evaluated in an anesthesia induction simulation with anesthesiologists as participants. Several performance measures were collected for two tasks: physiological monitoring and anesthesia induction. A multitask performance score equivalently weighted components from each task, normalized across experimental scenarios. Subjective rankings of the displays were also collected. Compared to the baseline (visual and auditory only) display configuration, each tactile display significantly improved performance in several objective measures, including multitask performance score. The continuously informing display that encoded the severity of patient health into the salience of its signals supported significantly better performance than the other two tactile displays. Contrasting the objective results, participants subjectively ranked the tactile alarm display highest. Continuously informing tactile displays with alarm-like properties (e.g., salience mapping) can better support anesthesiologists&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; physiological monitoring and multitasking performance under the high task demands of anesthesia induction. Adaptive display mechanisms may improve user acceptance. This study can inform display design to support multitasking performance of anesthesiologists in the clinical setting and other supervisory control operators in work domains characterized by high demands for visual and auditory resources.

Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Objective: This study evaluated the individual and combined effects of voice (vs. manual) input a... more Objective: This study evaluated the individual and combined effects of voice (vs. manual) input and head-up (vs. head-down) display in a driving and device interaction task. Background: Advances in wearable technology offer new possibilities for in-vehicle interaction but also present new challenges for managing driver attention and regulating device usage in vehicles. This research investigated how driving performance is affected by interface characteristics of devices used for concurrent secondary tasks. A positive impact on driving performance was expected when devices included voice-to-text functionality (reducing demand for visual and manual resources) and a head-up display (HUD) (supporting greater visibility of the driving environment). Method: Driver behavior and performance was compared in a texting-while-driving task set during a driving simulation. The texting task was completed with and without voice-to-text using a smartphone and with voice-to-text using Google Glass’s ...

Introduction The organization responsible for the oil spill response actions in Brazil is the Env... more Introduction The organization responsible for the oil spill response actions in Brazil is the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) created, after an accident occurred in the Guanabara Bay involving oil spill [1]. The EDC operates in contingency and emergency situations to mitigate the impacts from oil spill accidents. They operate seven days a week and 24 hours a day. The main function of the EDC is to support the existing local contingency plans in the refineries and the Operational Units of the oil company. This means that the EDC operates in oil spill occurrence aiming to ensure the maximum protection to the Operational Units and refineries to minimize the environmental consequences and the cost of the emergency. In 2000 the EDC was Currently, there are nine EDC in strategic points around Brazil (Amazônia, Maranhão, Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, Centro-Oeste, Bacia de Campos, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais), where there are petroleum activities. Each EDC is responsible to at...