Browsing by Author "Pfaff, Mark S."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    EXPRESSION OF EMOTION IN INSTANT MESSAGING
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Pirzadeh, Afarin; Pfaff, Mark S.
    Emotion expression in text-based instant messaging (IM) has received little empirical scrutiny. The emotional cues people use to express their dif-ferent emotions in IM communication and how their personality traits affect those cues are the main focus of this study. Results of a preliminary study in IM suggest that in stressful situations people apply significantly fewer vocal spelling emotional cues than in non-stressful situations. There is also a sig-nificant relationship between conscientiousness as a personality trait and use of lexical surrogate emotional cues in this type of communication. Our pro-posed study expands upon preliminary data to uncover more significant dif-ferences among the emotional cues people use to express different emotions in IM, including the role of relevant personality traits. Identifying how users express emotions in IM assists researchers and designers in focusing on the users’ emotional needs and results in the improvement of emotional com-munication strategies in IM.
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    The GRaPPa Lab: Supporting Team Decision Making in Complex Environments
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2010-04-09) Pfaff, Mark S.; Moon, Sung Pil; Liu, Yikun
    The GRaPPa (Group Psychology and Performance) Lab operates within the School of Informatics at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), in cooperation with the User Simulation and Experience Research Lab. The focus of our research is on interdependent teams in technologically complex work environments characterized by uncertainty, stress, high risk, changing moods, and varying levels of expertise. The GRaPPa Lab employs a mixed-methodological approach. Field studies provide rich and nuanced knowledge about individuals and teams at work in complex environments. Likewise, controlled laboratory experiments have provided the foundation for countless contributions to our understanding of the human characteristics that impact the development and use of systems, devices, and environments. Yet such experiments are limited in what they can tell us about work situated in real-world settings, just as field studies are limited in their support for precision and replicability. The GRaPPa Lab leverages the strengths of both through the use of simulated task environments and scaled worlds in the search for holistic assessments of group behavior and task performance. This poster will showcase aspects of an ongoing research program, Bridging the Situation Space to Decision Space Gap. This project is examining the modeling and visualization of decision space information to supplement situation space information in the contexts of disease contagion and emergency management. To enhance the decision support of emergency responders, we are examining the ability of decision space visualization tools to enhance option awareness and support more robust decision making. This work is focused on detailing the impact of the decision space information provided to users, relating the correctness of decisions to the levels of complexity represented in the events, and the affordances for understanding alternative actions. This ongoing project is focused on prototyping multiple visualization methods and testing them in human-in-the-loop experiments based on the domain of emergency crisis management. In addition, the computer models underlying the decision space are being expanded to support increasingly complex situations. This research provides further insight into the value of decision space information and option awareness for users working in complex environments.
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    Human emotions toward stimuli in the uncanny valley: laddering and index construction
    (2015) Ho, Chin-Chang; MacDorman, Karl F.; Pfaff, Mark S.; Fedorikhin, Alexander; Huang, Edgar
    Human-looking computer interfaces, including humanoid robots and animated humans, may elicit in their users eerie feelings. This effect, often called the uncanny valley, emphasizes our heightened ability to distinguish between the human and merely humanlike using both perceptual and cognitive approaches. Although reactions to uncanny characters are captured more accurately with emotional descriptors (e.g., eerie and creepy) than with cognitive descriptors (e.g., strange), and although previous studies suggest the psychological processes underlying the uncanny valley are more perceptual and emotional than cognitive, the deep roots of the concept of humanness imply the application of category boundaries and cognitive dissonance in distinguishing among robots, androids, and humans. First, laddering interviews (N = 30) revealed firm boundaries among participants’ concepts of animated, robotic, and human. Participants associated human traits like soul, imperfect, or intended exclusively with humans, and they simultaneously devalued the autonomous accomplishments of robots (e.g., simple task, limited ability, or controlled). Jerky movement and humanlike appearance were associated with robots, even though the presented robotic stimuli were humanlike. The facial expressions perceived in robots as improper were perceived in animated characters as mismatched. Second, association model testing indicated that the independent evaluation based on the developed indices is a viable quantitative technique for the laddering interview. Third, from the interviews several candidate items for the eeriness index were validated in a large representative survey (N = 1,311). The improved eeriness index is nearly orthogonal to perceived humanness (r = .04). The improved indices facilitate plotting relations among rated characters of varying human likeness, enhancing perspectives on humanlike robot design and animation creation.
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    Multiple vantage points of the common operational picture: Supporting International Teamwork
    (HFES Press, 2006) McNeese, Michael D.; Pfaff, Mark S.; Connors, Erik S.; Obieta, Joaquin F.; Terrell, Ivanna S.; Friedenberg, Marc A.
    This paper summarizes multiple perspectives of the common operational picture (COP) in military and civilian crisis management domains viewed from three vantage points: historical, conceptual, and practical. The term COP extends prior research on large group displays to describe a visual representation of tactical, operational, and strategic information intended to generate situation awareness. We present four strata of interest to formulate an innovative conceptual framework of the COP based on user-team needs: structure, representation, processes, and management. This conceptual framework is applied as part of a review of recent and ongoing projects that examines current research gaps in the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to international humanitarian response.
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    The persuasiveness of humanlike computer interfaces varies more through narrative characterization than through the uncanny valley
    (2015) Patel, Himalaya; Pfaff, Mark S.; Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie; MacDorman, Karl F.; Šabanović, Selma
    Just as physical appearance affects persuasion and compliance in human communication, it may also bias the processing of information from avatars, computer-animated characters, and other computer interfaces with faces. Although the most persuasive of these interfaces are often the most humanlike, they incur the greatest risk of falling into the uncanny valley, the loss of empathy associated with eerily human characters. The uncanny valley could delay the acceptance of humanlike interfaces in everyday roles. To determine the extent to which the uncanny valley affects persuasion, two experiments were conducted online with undergraduates from Indiana University. The first experiment (N = 426) presented an ethical dilemma followed by the advice of an authority figure. The authority was manipulated in three ways: depiction (recorded or animated), motion quality (smooth or jerky), and recommendation (disclose or refrain from disclosing sensitive information). Of these, only the recommendation changed opinion about the dilemma, even though the animated depiction was eerier than the human depiction. These results indicate that compliance with an authority persists even when using a realistic computer-animated double. The second experiment (N = 311) assigned one of two different dilemmas in professional ethics involving the fate of a humanlike character. In addition to the dilemma, there were three manipulations of the character’s human realism: depiction (animated human or humanoid robot), voice (recorded or synthesized), and motion quality (smooth or jerky). In one dilemma, decreasing depiction realism or increasing voice realism increased eeriness. In the other dilemma, increasing depiction realism decreased perceived competence. However, in both dilemmas realism had no significant effect on whether to punish the character. Instead, the willingness to punish was predicted in both dilemmas by narratively characterized trustworthiness. Together, the experiments demonstrate both direct and indirect effects of narratives on responses to humanlike interfaces. The effects of human realism are inconsistent across different interactions, and the effects of the uncanny valley may be suppressed through narrative characterization.