Comparison Of Human Performance Research Articles

Effects of body visualization on performance in head-mounted display virtual reality.

Although there are many virtual reality (VR) applications in sports, only a handful of studies visualized the whole body. There is still a lack of understanding, how much of the own body must be visualized in the head-mounted display (HMD) based VR, to ensure fidelity and similar performance outcome as in the real-world. In the current study, 20 young and healthy participants completed three tasks in a real and virtual environment: balance task, grasping task, and throwing task with a ball. The aim was to find out the meaning of the visualization of different body parts for the quality of movement execution and to derive future guidelines for virtual body presentation. In addition, a comparison of human performance between reality and VR, with whole-body visualization was made. Focusing on the main goal of the current study, there were differences within the measured parameters due to the visualization of different body parts. In the balance task, the differences within the VR body visualization consisted mainly through no-body visualization (NB) compared to the other visualization types defined as whole-body (WB), WB except feet (NF), as well as WB except feet and legs (NLF). In the grasping task, the different body visualization seemed to have no impact on the participants’ performances. In the throwing task, the whole-body visualization led to higher accuracy compared to the other visualization types. Regarding the comparison between the conditions, we found significant differences between reality and VR, which had a large effect on the parameters time for completion in the balance and grasping task, the number of foot strikes on the beam in the balance task, as well as the subjective estimation of the difficulty for all tasks. However, the number of errors and the quality of the performances did not differ significantly. The current study was the first study comparing sports-related tasks in VR and reality with further manipulations (occlusions of body parts) of the virtual body. For studies analyzing perception and sports performance or for VR sports interventions, we recommend the visualization of the whole body in real-time.

A Comparison of Human Performance between Operators of a Main Control Room in the SMR

Objective: This study aims to improve human performance by analyzing the operators" tasks and providing input data on the composition of future SMART operators.BRBR Background: SMART is a nuclear reactor for export which needs operators who can satisfy both safety and economic feasibility. Therefore, this study is fundamental research on the composition of operators and this research analyzed SMART tasks in terms of human safety performance.BRBR Method: After analyzing 10 SMART EOG in hierarchical task analysis, this study classified task performance types according to task requirements of NUREG-0711 (Rev.3).BRBR Results: This study found the task frequency of SMART EOG and 12 operating task types.BRBR Conclusion: This study expects that human performance can be improved by analyzing the personal errors, which have the highest task frequency among 12 operating task types.BRBR Application: The results of this study can be applied as base data when licensing needs to be acquired.

A comparison of human performance in figural and navigational versions of the traveling salesman problem

Performance on a typical pen-and-paper (figural) version of the Traveling Salesman Problem was compared to performance on a room-sized navigational version of the same task. Nine configurations were designed to examine the use of the nearest-neighbor (NN), cluster approach, and convex-hull strategies. Performance decreased with an increasing number of nodes internal to the hull, and improved when the NN strategy produced the optimal path. There was no overall difference in performance between figural and navigational task modalities. However, there was an interaction between modality and configuration, with evidence that participants relied more heavily on the NN strategy in the figural condition. Our results suggest that participants employed similar, but not identical, strategies when solving figural and navigational versions of the problem. Surprisingly, there was no evidence that participants favored global strategies in the figural version and local strategies in the navigational version.

Identifying gender in fricatives: A comparison of human performance with a classification based on Cepstral coefficients.

A recent gender identification study using Cepstral coefficients extracted from voiced and voiceless fricatives from four different places of articulation yielded 78% correct classification in a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) [Spinu and Lilley (2010)]. This high accuracy was somewhat unexpected, as previous cross-linguistic studies of fricatives generally found no significant effects of gender on various types of acoustic measures. The current study investigates whether humans can identify gender based solely on frication noise as successfully as the LDA. 30 English-speaking undergraduates were asked to identify the gender of fricatives produced by 10 speakers (5 males and 5 females)—a subset of the sounds used in the LDA study. The analysis, currently in progress, suggests that humans may not be as successful as the LDA. These findings are expected to shed light on both (a) the differential distribution of acoustic features related to gender in fricatives, and (b) the extent to which these features are available/employed in human perception.

A Comparison of Human Performance in Grasping Virtual Objects by Hand and with Tools of Different Length Ratios

Tool use brings challenges to human movement control. Mental calibrations are constantly needed to incorporate tool properties into the movement system. This project examines the accuracy of mental calibrations and studies the impact of tool use on the movement control. Eight university students were instructed to perform a matching task using a hand-held grasper. The grasper had a changeable hinge that alters the length ratios of the tool for different trials. Throughout the matching, visual feedback regarding the hand position and tool was not available. The matching accuracy was significantly reduced when using the grasper compared to using the hand directly. This indicates that the mental calibration is not as accurate as visual or proprioception for guiding movement. No significant matching difference was observed as a function of length ratios of the grasper, suggesting similar steps were involved in the mental calibration process for one kind of tool property.

A Comparison of Human Performance in Grasping Virtual Objects by Hand and with Tools of Different Length Ratios

Tool use brings challenges to human movement control. Mental calibrations are constantly needed to incorporate tool properties into the movement system. This project examines the accuracy of mental calibrations and studies the impact of tool use on the movement control. Eight university students were instructed to perform a matching task using a hand-held grasper. The grasper had a changeable hinge that alters the length ratios of the tool for different trials. Throughout the matching, visual feedback regarding the hand position and tool was not available. The matching accuracy was significantly reduced when using the grasper compared to using the hand directly. This indicates that the mental calibration is not as accurate as visual or proprioception for guiding movement. No significant matching difference was observed as a function of length ratios of the grasper, suggesting similar steps were involved in the mental calibration process for one kind of tool property.

Comparison of human performance by knowledge domain: Types, frequency, and sequencing of errors made while interacting with an information system

This study investigated whether measures of error type, frequency, and sequencing contribute to understanding how different types of domain knowledge influence human performance when using information systems. Micro-level analyses of errors were conducted to compare the performance of two groups using a geographical information system (GIS). Error types, error frequency, error sequencing, and task completion were measured and compared for the two groups. The two groups were similar in frequency of type of errors; both committed terminological and trial errors more frequently than the other 10 types. Error patterns or sequences were likewise similar, and domain of expertise did not affect task completion time. The group with domain knowledge in computer science showed a somewhat greater tendency to commit certain knowledge-based errors (KBEs), indicating an association between knowledge-based errors and procedural knowledge. The group with domain knowledge in geography committed certain rule-based errors (RBEs) more often, indicating an association between rule-based errors and declarative knowledge. Therefore, error type does hold promise as a measure of the relationship between domain knowledge type and human performance using information systems.

Adaptive Automation of a Dynamic Control Task Based on Secondary Task Workload Measurement

Adaptive automation (AA) has been proposed as a method for regulating human workload and abating out-of-the-loop performance problems in complex systems control. The majority of AA or adaptive manual control studies, to this point, have facilitated control allocations using either preprogrammed schemes based on desired system performance, comparisons of human performance with established goals, or psychophysical variable monitoring to represent workload levels and determine appropriate control allocations for moderating workload. This study further explored the psychophysical assessment approach by using a secondary task measure of workload to facilitate control allocations in a complex primary task. An experiment was conducted in which participants performed a secondary gauge-monitoring task along with a simulated radar monitoring and target elimination task. Differences in single-secondary task performance and performance observed while also functioning in the primary task were used to direct operator-m...

96/03894 Escape route lighting — comparison of human performance with traditional lighting and wayfinding systems

A sign consisting of a pictorial overlaid with a red circle-slash (i.e., a red circle with a red slash) is used ubiquitously to convey the message that some activity is prohibited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pictorial solidity, size, and direction of elongation (DE) of the pictorial and orientation and thickness of the red circle-slash on the preference ratings for prohibitive symbols.Solid (filled) pictorials were rated better than pictorials in outline form. Pictorials with a size equal to or greater than 75% of the length of the inner diameter of the circle-slash were rated higher than pictorials 50% in size. The effect of pictorial DE was not significant: pictorials with a greater vertical DE (i.e., tall/thin pictorials) did not differ from pictorials with a greater horizontal DE (i.e., short/wide pictorials), in terms of their preference ratings. However, pictorial DE interacted with slash orientation. Diagonal slashes were rated better than vertical or horizontal ones. Further, symbols were rated better when the thickness of the red circle-slash was such that its resulting area comprised 25% of the total area inside its outer circle at least. Moreover, the interaction of pictorial size and slash thickness indicated that the preference for prohibitive symbols of thicker slash and smaller pictorial size might be degraded drastically.Implications of the results for the design of prohibitive symbols were discussed.

Escape route lighting: Comparison of human performance with traditional lighting and wayfinding systems

Emergency systems consisting of low-mounted luminous guidance and signage are being developed for use on escape routes in buildings to provide an emergency wayfinding system at times of power failu...

Comparison of human performance with algorithms for estimating fractal dimension of fractional Brownian statistics

Five standard methods for estimating fractal dimension were compared by means of one-dimensional fractional Brownian series generated by four different algorithms yielding series with different statistics. The same one-dimensional series were also displayed as jagged lines and as one-dimensional luminance patterns for judgments by human observers. Only the algorithm implementing the maximum-likelihood method, which required that the generation statistic for the fractal series be known, gave better performance than human observers in estimating fractal dimension. However, when the method of generation is not known, one of the four other standard methods for estimating fractal dimension must be used, and these performed significantly worse than human observers.

Recognition of steady-state French sounds pronounced by several speakers: Comparison of human performance and an automatic recognition algorithm

Recognition of steady-state French sounds pronounced by several speakers: Comparison of human performance and an automatic recognition algorithm

Recovery from Sound Exposure: Comparison of Human Performance and Responses from Single Auditory-Nerve Fibers in the Cat

Following moderate exposure to pure tones (1 min, less than 70 dB SPL), the discharge rate of cat auditory-nerve fibers in response to near threshold tones is depressed. Recovery to normal (preexposure) firing rate follows a time course well approximated by the simple exponential function A[1−b exp(−t/τ)] [YOUNG, E. D., AND SACHS, M. B. (1971). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 50, 94(A)]. We have measured probability of detection of near-threshold tones in human subjects following similar exposures. The recovery of detection probability is similar to recovery in the neural data. Recovery time constants are usually under 10 sec. These time constants decrease as the test-tone level is increased. As exposure level is increased, time constants for neural data increase. Psychophysical time constants increase with exposure level below about 40 dB SPL; unlike neural time constants they decrease at higher levels. The relationship of these data to TTS will be discussed. [Supported by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and the U. S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.]