UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 1 The Psychometric Approach to Individual Differences: Implications for Human Factors Research and Practice James L. Szalma Performance Research Laboratory (PeRL), University of Central Florida

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 2 Why Study Individual Differences? To Remain Human-Centered

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 3 Why Study Individual Differences? Neglect of Individual Differences: A very curious kind of ‘human-centered design’

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 4 Group Differences versus Individual Differences “The Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology” (Cronbach, 1957) “Experimental” vs. “Correlational” Psychology: Antagonism or Synergy?

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 5 Trait Theories “Big Five” Factor Theory N euroticism (emotional stability) E xtraversion O penness to Experience (Intellect) A greeableness C onscientiousness

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 6 Domains and Facets

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 7 Personality and Human Performance

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 8 Personality and Stress Response

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 9 How do we explain such complex effects? Theories of stress and performance?

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 10 Theories of Stress and Performance Maximal Adaptability Model (Hancock & Warm, 1989)

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 11 Theories of Stress and Performance

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 12 How do we explain such complex effects? Correlations between traits and performance?

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 13 Two Approaches to Individual Differences Research Selective Attention Divided Attention Sustained Attention Working Memory Problem Solving Extraversion cf. Hockey & Hamilton (1983); Matthews, 1992; Matthews, Davies, Westerman, & Stammers(2000)

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 14 Two Approaches to Individual Differences Research Sustained AttentionExtraversion cf. Hockey & Hamilton (1983); Matthews, 1992; Matthews et al. (2000) Neuroticism/Anxiety Pessimism Field Dependence

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 15 Cognitive Patterning of Extraversion & Anxiety/Neuroticism

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 16 How do we explain such complex effects? Theory Integration at multiple levels of analysis

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 17 Cognitive-Adaptive Framework Matthews and Zeidner (2004)

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 18 Styles of adaptive self regulation supporting extraversion

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 19 Styles of adaptive self regulation supporting anxiety/neuroticism

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 20 Maximal Adaptability Model

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 21 Maximal Adaptability Model: Emotional Stability

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 22 Maximal Adaptability Model: Emotional Stability

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 23 Maximal Adaptability Model: Extraversion

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 24 Maximal Adaptability Model: Extraversion

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 25 Task Performance Task Physical Social Affective Perceptual/ Cognitive Affective Motivational Perceptual/ Cognitive Physiological

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 26 Task Specification task characteristics ‘complexity’ ‘demand’ ‘difficulty’ Vigilance Automation

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 27 Individual Differences in Vigilance Performance Period of Watch (6-min) d'

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 28 Wanted for Vigilance WANTED!!! _________________________________ ___________________________ For auditory monitoring position- Prefer a blind, introverted, middle-class male or female, with an average to above average IQ, who exhibits a coronary-prone behavior pattern, is field independent, has an internal locus of control, does not daydream, is a good reader and an experienced meditator. (Berch & Kanter, 1984)

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 29 Individual Differences in Adaptive Automation  Interaction of human and agent characteristics  Overall system performance  Relation of personality to trust in adaptive automation

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 30 Project Methods

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 31 IED Stimuli

UCF October 2 nd 2007HFES Annual Meeting 2007, Baltimore, MD 32 Summary Individual Differences: Beyond Selection –Individuation in Design –Adaptive Training –A more complete theory of Human Performance: Better Designs Experimental and ‘Correlational’ Psychology: A Rapprochement? Task-Trait-State Interactions