Assisted entry mitigates text messaging-based driving detriment.

Previous research using cell phones indicates that manual manipulation is not a principal component of text messaging relating driving detriment. This paper suggests that manipulation of a phone in conjunction with the cognitive need to compose the message itself co-act to contribute to driving degradation. This being so, drivers sending text messages might experience reduced interference to the driving task if the text messaging itself were assisted through the predictive T9 system. We evaluated undergraduate drivers in a simulator who drove and texted using either Assisted Text entry, via Nokia's T9 system, or unassisted entry via the multitap interface. Results supported the superiority of the T9 system over the multitap system implying that specific assistive technologies can modulate the degradation of capacity which texting tragically induces.

Finding the team for Mars: a psychological and human factors analysis of a Mars Desert Research Station crew.

A two-week mission in March and April of 2011 sent six team members to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). MDRS, a research facility in the high Utah desert, provides an analogue for the harsh and unusual working conditions that will be faced by men and women who one day explore Mars. During the mission a selection of quantitative and qualitative psychological tests were administered to the international, multidisciplinary team. A selection of the results are presented along with discussion.

Familiarity from the configuration of objects in 3-dimensional space and its relation to déjà vu: a virtual reality investigation.

Déjà vu is the striking sense that the present situation feels familiar, alongside the realization that it has to be new. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, déjà vu results when the configuration of elements within a scene maps onto a configuration previously seen, but the previous scene fails to come to mind. We examined this using virtual reality (VR) technology. When a new immersive VR scene resembled a previously-viewed scene in its configuration but people failed to recall the previously-viewed scene, familiarity ratings and reports of déjà vu were indeed higher than for completely novel scenes. People also exhibited the contrasting sense of newness and of familiarity that is characteristic of déjà vu. Familiarity ratings and déjà vu reports among scenes recognized as new increased with increasing feature-match of a scene to one stored in memory, suggesting that feature-matching can produce familiarity and déjà vu when recall fails.