Argus is a radar simulation that containins approaching airships. Each airship varies across seven attributes, such as speed, altitude, distance from ownship, etc. The primary task is to classify the threat of each airship. Argus was developed to support research in measuring and modeling cognitive workload. Argus can be used in single-subject and team modes.

Over the last two decades attempts to quantify decision-making have established that, under a wide range of conditions, people trade-off effectiveness for efficiency in the strategies they adopt. However, as interesting, significant, and influential as this research has been, its scope is limited by three factors; the coarseness of how effort was measured, the confounding of the costs of steps in the decision-making algorithm with the costs of steps in a given task environment, and the static nature of the decision tasks studied. Across a series of experiments, we embed decision-making tasks into dynamic task environments and vary the cost required for various steps. Across studies, small changes in the cost of interactive behavior leads to changes in the strategy adopted for decision-making as well as to differences in how a step in the same strategy is implemented. Work is proceeding to construct a family of ACT-R models, simBorgs, that perform aspects of the DMAP tasks in the same way as humans.

Over the years, many researchers have found that humans often exhibit stable, suboptimal behavior. This project is designed to further examine the factors influencing strategy selection in a simple paradigm involving repeatedly choosing between two options.

The goal of MultiWorld is to further integrate cognitive models with the real world. Traditionally, psychologists studying task switching have studied simple laboratory tasks in isolation. This approach has yielded decades of data, but little relevance to the sorts of tasks humans perform routinely. How are we able to perform multiple, complex tasks simultaneously? How do we decide to switch between two tasks? What is the mechanism enabling task switching? MultiWorld seeks to answer these questions by providing a framework for studying multitasking in complex environments. By running tasks and cognitive models on seperate computers, MultiWorld ensures that the dividing line between the two is made explicit. Thus the model sees only what its human counterpart sees.

The ObViS (pronounced like obvious) research project involves the development and validation of measures of visual similarity. We predict that when searching for a particular target object, the similarity of low-level visual features of any given object to the features of the target object will be a better predictor of visual attention than the saliency of the object.

‘Simon’ uses a simple memory game to study the role of visual, auditory and spatial sensory modalities in the cognitive processes of memory and attention.

Tardast is a new and intriguing paradigm to investigate aspects of human multitasking behavior, complex system management and supervisory control. We replicate and extend the original Tardast study (Shakeri, 2003, Shakeri & Funk, in press) that assesses operators' learning curve and explains performance gains in terms of increased sensitivity to task parameters and a superior ability of better operators to prioritze tasks.

See http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/cogworks/tardast/ for additional information.

TRACS is a 'Tool for Research on Adaptive Cognitive Strategies'. It is a simple card game developed by Kevin Burns, and can be played online at http://tracsgame.com. (Additional background information is available at http://mentalmodels.mitre.org.) As in the original TRACS studies, we are using the game to assess people's abilities to keep track of the changing odds throughout the course of a game. By equipping our application with eye-tracking and various optional enhancements we are able to run subtle variations and gather a full range of experimental data. Consistent with our "to understand it, build it" approach, we use computational cognitive modeling techniques to test our theories as to the cognitive mechanisms involved.
Our findings have direct implications for research in memory, embodied cognition, and interactive behavior. In addition, our application will be used in combination with the CogWorks MultiWorld for further research on the effects of cognitive workload.

Visual search takes place whenever we are looking for something. But when the location of a search target has been encoded on a previous occasion, memory processes can supplement or compete with eye movements during search. The goal of this project is to illuminate the interactions of visual attention and memory by assessing how humans adapt their search strategies to the cost structure of a task environment.