Memory and Emotional Subsystems & Boston Children’s Hospital Virtual Tour
Human Factors in Information Design, Bentley University
HF700: Human Factors Foundations
Dr. WM Gribbons
December 14, 2020
Human perception and cognition are formed by the intersection and contextualization of new external stimuli within stored memory of knowledge and experience. (Lazarus, 1984) The memory process begins with a portal, which measures and controls pre-attentive organization by sensory threshold. Perceived stimuli, filtered by short term memory and chunks of encoded input, are organized as stored knowledge in the long term memory. While offering efficiency in executing primary tasks of survival, this process evidences the limitations of working memory. In the context of designing for human experience, aligning and mapping logistical and individual goals and expectations though both technical and task requirements, enables designers to ensure outcome task and interaction are consistent and sufficient to meet perceived value proposition.
This paper will review the scientific research relevant to working memory factors and cognitive load issues. Human working memory is limited by capacity, constrained by time and highly sensitive to volatility. Motivation and anxiety are critical factors to the capability of one’s working memory. A design case of a virtual tour examines some of the limitations of working memory and recommends strategies to ease human decision making.
Memory & Emotional Subsystems
Memory states operate along a continuum of sensory to working to long term memory. Sensory memory typically entails automatic or unattended response in less than a few seconds. If reaching the just noticeable difference, the sensory channels engage temporary mechanisms to amplify and prolong stimulus legibility after the stimulus ends. Working memory requires active attention and information holding, and is subject to displacement decay. Typically deemed for tasks of a few seconds to twenty seconds, working memory requires information be coded phonetically, visually, and semantically to be maintained via rehearsal. Higher performers generally exhibit more comprehensive working memories as they engage in the context of their schema as experts with extended working capability. Long term memory typically defines memory duration exceeding twenty seconds. Long term memory, collected and compiled over the course of hours to an entire lifetime, links new information to access and reactivate existing knowledge. In the case of long term memory, which is already established, the mind finds congruences between presentation of a body of knowledge and pre-existing mental structures. While long term memory has the potential for infinite duration, capacity interference likely impedes this capability.
Researchers proposed that working memory operated as a three component model, consisting of a phonological loop to store auditory input and stimuli; a visuospatial sketchpad to organize visual and spatial inputs; and a central executive to guide relative attention (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). These working memory phonological, semantic, visual subsystems are monitored as metacognitive processes as the central executive mitigates and magnages information through attention allocation, reasoning, learning, decision making, calculations, and creativity. Later, the episodic buffer was introduced as “an interface” to integrate key processing models of long term memory into working memory as it “is capable of holding multi-dimensional episodes or chunks” of layered multisensory information. (Baddeley, 2007) This buffer provides storage space for the interactions between the phonological, semantic, visual subsystems, given that the central executive primarily deals with attention allocation. (Baddeley, 2010; Cowan, 1998)
There are several methods to retrieve memories including recalling a discrete memory, recognizing a comparative task, and relearning to trace memories. Some aids to recall include context, mental state, sensory stimulation, and mnemonics. Recall, integrated to the semantic network is affected by category size and typicality effect. Forgetting may be explained by fracture engrams, altered schemata, repression, interference, flawed encoding, or ulterior motivation.
Limited Capacity
While long term memory is highly organized, intricately connected, and constantly evolving, working memory is limited in capacity. The human mind reaches a point of information overload and as a result, we see humans filter or omit information, make errors, respond with delay, use estimates, and even escape or abandon the cognitive task entirely. Organization and filtering is key to prioritizing cognitive functions to optimize capacity. Cognitive load can be understood within the sources of intrinsic, minimum load of entry to complex material within a fixed baseline load; germane, load of schema construction and commitment to long term memory that is highly affected by methods of information design; and extraneous, load of unessential information or noise that does not pertain to schema construction. (Sweller, 2005) However, implementing dual-coding offers a greater likelihood of total capacity utilization.
Working memory, limited by short term memory load, benefits from spatial binding. Spatial Binding provides visual proximity cues, and cognitive binding, which groups information into legible chunks. Generally, our capacity and memory are limited to retain 7+/-2 chunks of information. (Miller, 1956) If the demand on working memory “is greater than the number of items that could be held in the focus of attention at one time, so that activated items must exist outside of the focus of attention” (Cowan, 1995) Further, while humans are capable of detection, we struggle to make fine or unapparent discriminations, which demands a reasonable degree of difference. Working memory errors tend to compound in situations with significantly high cognitive loads, and the mind exhibits distributed workload analysis.
Time Constrained
Human working memory is highly volatile and subject to intersection of compounding factors. Information chunking benefits information processing in working memory as it reduces units to be processed, optimizes for existing schema of the long term memory, and creates opportunity for rehearsal and learning. Decay in working memory is attributed to cognitive competition, attention allocation and engagement, and degree of information similarity. We know that information decays over time (Brown, 1958) However, “forgetting is found to progress at differential rates dependent on the amount of controlled rehearsal of the stimulus” (Peterson & Peterson, 1959) And recency and frequency contribute to retention through recall strategies, as rehearsal employs a phonological loop to aid working memory capability particularly in the first 20 seconds of information obtainment. (Cowan, 1998; Peterson & Peterson, 1959; Engle)
Highly Volatile
Areli calls to our attention that people are ultimately irrational, evidenced by the volatility of our working memory. Human working memory is highly volatile and subject to intersection of compounding factors. In regard to volatility, we must keep in mind that perceived value impacts distribution of cognitive effort and working memory. When perceived value is high, a person may operate at a very high level by employing schema, networks, and patterns. And given a high enough reward, the person may not even call attention to the hindrance.
Effort is directly related to the depth of learning in long term memory. To foster retention via processing depth critical components include sufficient duration of presentation and occurrences of rehearsal as well as appropriate distribution and elaboration of presentation resources. Elaboration demands identification between incidental and intentional, processing depth, and complimentary content generation. The strength of dual coding provides that concrete and tangible terms are more easily remembered than abstract and unidentifiable groups of letters or terms. Information of working memory is highly subject to corruption such as by prior experience, concurrent emotion, state of attentional, and external events. Here, we also see evidence of the problematic nature and potential damage of over stimulation. As volume of information increases so does decay. Decay is tied to interruption and interference which are critically impactful to volatility in working memory. (Anderson, 2003)
Anxiety & Motivation
Emotions and working memory are naturally and intricately linked to the user experience, considered on an expanded range and may include pleasure, reward, fear, credibility, trust, presumptions, appearance, reputation, earned performance and reciprocity; in other words, “the cognitive domain where the influence of emotion is best understood is memory.” (Dolan, 2002) An elevated mood elicits creativity and divergent thought processes while a negative mood diminishes attention and reduces investigative attempts. Emotions must also be conceptualized with the notion of regret.
Anxiety is a significant factor to working memory. However, while evolution equipped us for survival to anticipate threats we can also imagine them, an unfortunate byproduct of complex thinking. (Coolidge & Wynn, 2005) This human ability, to conceptualize circumstances and situations reflexively ushered in both positive and negative emotions. (Coolidge & Wynn, 2005) Motivation and anxiety, intricately linked with cognition, affect properties of higher level thinking. (Norman, 2004; Staal, 2004). Anxiety and motivation provide a sufficient level of arousal in order to execute action. (Staal, 2004) Processing efficiency theory posits that “performance deficits due to generalized anxiety” will be apparent in tasks that demand activation than the limited capacity of working memory allows. Anxiety is linked to negative stress which is any “environmental situation that is perceived as presenting a demand which threatens to exceed the person's capabilities and resources for meeting it,” given person “expects a substantial differential in the rewards and costs from meeting the demand versus not meeting it.” (McGrath, 1976)
Working memory is affected by motivation. Motivation operates to enable working memory by providing enhanced capability under extenuating value proposition and/or threat. When a user is motivated, operating at a high level of mindful engagement or arousal, they can extend their biological and cognitive capabilities to superseded limitations that would normally impede performance. Intrinsic motivation is most noticeably significant. Motivation may stem from personal or imposed intentions, desired reward or gratification, pleasure, or efficiency.
Humans tend toward understanding and in the absence of understanding we see cognitive dissonance creep in as anxiety. Some anxiety facilities focus of potential capacity and may be beneficial to effective and efficient engagement and task completion. The absence of anxiety leads to mindless engagement while too much anxiety may reach the point of diminishing return and even lead to decision paralysis. Anxiety may be induced or further compounded by external stressors such as environment, fatigue, and situational frustration. Psychological stressors such as threat to our survival, lowered self-esteem, and loss of value or goals may exacerbate existing anxiety. Anxiety manifests in various outcomes including physiological changes, which can be biometrically observed and measured in basic human functions such as appetite and heart rate, and reduced capacity for information processing. To best reduce anxiety, designers can manipulate information density, offer user validation and support, employ familiar language and imagery, reduce redundancy, limit information to scope of task, and eliminate noise.
Product Review
Working memory can be considered in workload analysis and is compounded by the interactions of capacity, anxiety, fatigue, age, expertise, learning disability, and motivation. The following design review analyzes the decision environment provided by the digital entry sequence in a virtual tour of the Boston Children’s Hospital with special consideration for anxiety and motivation to provide recommendations for improvement. The Boston Children’s Hospital virtual tour offers guidance for concerned parents and their children to digitally plan and experience entry to the hospital prior to physical arrival. Given this specific and information-dense decision environment—children’s health, a context of high emotional stress and significant consequence—users are entering a task of significant severity with a pre-existing heavy cognitive load.
As a strategy to embolden parents and patients alike in the patient experience, a virtual tour should offer adequate visual and textual information for users to map the digital experience to the subsequent spatial experience. Here, we see surface credibility as the site appears decently readable and legible with sufficient layout symmetry, allowing users to deem the site and resource credible and therefore advance in a more vulnerable state. A parent enters the website and must navigate to the patient resources page to find the virtual tours page. After conducting a brief review of a page outlining components of the virtual tour and watching a 4:30 minute instructional video on virtual tour logistics, a user would likely feel adequately equipped to click the link to begin the virtual tour in a new webpage.
Figures 1-3: Virtual Tour Navigation & Instruction
A parent intending to bring their child to the hospital requires guidance to not only instruction and definition of this intermediary virtual interface, but also to determine actual appropriate route, understand procedural entry processes and expectations, prepare for key interactions, and navigate the physical layout of the hospital space. This experience is considered through factors of anxiety and motivation—each evidencing limitations of the working memory within patient experience.
Figures 4-6: Virtual Tour Entry Start Sequence
Factors of anxiety in regard to usability are highly prevalent in this application as we see entrants with a high cognitive load, likely parents are dealing with many concerns regarding a hospital venture and would like to reduce complexity as they are able. However, when considering user experience, the virtual experience does not map well with the expected in person experience. A user is unable to navigate the three dimensional space as one may be familiar with such as in other spatial softwares such as google maps. The small aerial map provides some measure of human performance as a user can see how they have progressed through the map relative ot the intended layout. But in the view they are unable to locate any geolocational indicators to aid in this spatial mapping. Load can be better managed through more effective design of the interface overall. To address user anxiety, the virtual tour should be as seamless as possible and require as little [1] background knowledge as possible—so a user would find all the navigational and instructional information easily and legibilt embedded within the tour so as to reduce user steps. By reconsidering this work process, a user is likely able to focus more attention to the spatial experience that they are trying to learn about within the interface. Cues that point a user in the next direction will provide performance support so that the user is not lost in three dimensional without direction, which only further exacerbates any existing anxiety.
Figures 7-9: Virtual Tour Building Approach Sequence
In regard to usability, users are highly motivated to learn the platform as there are severe consequences associated with failed hospital visits. The high emotional investment from parents prompts intrinsic motivation and likely brings them to prepare for their hospital visit in every way[1] possible, including using this platform to become familiar with the entry process to the hospital. However, this virtual tour is flawed in that it is likely intended for parents and patients but instead directs a user through the staff entrance under the blue portico. When considering user experience, it is easy to see that someone could be confused and accidentally make a mistake in the actual execution of their task and possibly even be late to their visit to their hospital appointment. Human performance could be managed through more effective design and offering direct pathways for individuals to approach their intended destinations. In all, the virtual tour is difficult, clunky, and frustrating for a user. The Children’s Hospital may be able to better invest their time in separate individual prerecord, annotated, and narrated videos to offer families directions through maneuvering the hospital as the total number of paths seems limited. This reconsideration for the work process highly reduces the demand of a user with the interface and almost entirely eliminates the need for performance support within a three dimensional spatial representation.
Figures 10-12: Virtual Tour Building Entry Sequence
Immediate design actions include reducing load imposed on working memory, grouping information with familiar and appropriate principles, placing corresponding pictures and text in close proximity, avoiding superfluous labels, increasing memory load for experts within subject-matter domain, encouraging smooth information application, and avoiding repetitive or similar information or noise. To further expand on these design actions, a designer can offer visual echoes that may provide natural language interaction, offer meaning sequences of information, prioritize use of letters before numbers, and provide congruent instructions.
To conclude, since working memory is limited by capacity, constrained by time, and highly sensitive to volatility, designers must determine critical moments of usability, user experience, performance to design specific interventions to support and human cognitive load. By delivering simple and intuitive solutions, a designer meets the user with an appropriate level of information in given decision environments.
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