Applied will publish original empirical investigations in experimental psychology that bridge practically oriented problems and psychological theory. The journal also will publish research aimed at developing and testing of models of cognitive processing or behavior in applied situations, including laboratory and field settings. Review articles will be considered for publication if they contribute significantly to important topics within applied experimental psychology.Areas of interest include applications of perception, attention, decision making, reasoning, information processing, learning, and performance. Settings may be industrial (such as human-computer interface design), academic (such as intelligent computer-aided instruction), or consumer oriented (such as applications of text comprehension theory to the development or evaluation of product instructions).

No abstract

Our response to visual events can be delayed at positions we have recently examined attentively. Such inhibition could organize visual search through static scenes by suppressing those loci already searched, but this mechanism would fail in moving scenes as objects' locations then change during search. We cued attention to a moving object and found subsequent inhibition at the locus the object later occupied. This implies that previously examined objects are suppressed. Such object-centred inhibition would be highly adaptive, but would require a sophisticated neural implementation for a mechanism held to be sub-cortical.

It has been proposed that 1 component of the mechanism of visual selective attention is active inhibition of distracting information. A series of studies examines the time course of inhibition and the possible interfering effects of other task demands. Results demonstrate that inhibition can last at least 7 s after selection processes and that it is unaffected by predictable, unrelated intervening events. However, intervening events that are less predictable, or are the same as the inhibited stimulus, disrupt inhibition. Such results motivate a reconsideration of the previous view of distractor inhibition as a transient, fragile phenomenon.

Rather than age or the severity of the illness and organ dysfunction, the strongest determinants of the withdrawal of ventilation in critically ill patients were the physician's perception that the patient preferred not to use life support, the physician's predictions of a low likelihood of survival in the intensive care unit and a high likelihood of poor cognitive function, and the use of inotropes or vasopressors.

It has been argued that during selection of target objects, irrelevant distractor objects are inhibited (e.g. Tipper, 1985). This article examines whether distractor inhibition is an invariant process that occurs in the same way for each act of selection, or whether it is a flexible process that adjusts to particular behavioural goals. We review previous studies and report new experiments that demonstrate that inhibition is a flexible process. Those internal representations of the distractor that are most associated with the action to be directed toward the target are inhibited. Other properties of the ignored object can remain in an active state and can facilitate subsequent behaviour.

Context  Computer‐aided instruction is used increasingly in medical education and anatomy instruction with limited research evidence to guide its design and deployment. Objectives  To determine the effects of (a) learner control over the e‐learning environment and (b) key views of the brain versus multiple views in the learning of brain surface anatomy. Design  Randomised trial with 2 phases of study. Participants Volunteer sample of 1st‐year psychology students (phase 1, n = 120; phase 2, n = 120). Interventions  Phase 1: computer‐based instruction in brain surface anatomy with 4 conditions: (1) learner control/multiple views (LMV); (2) learner control/key views (LKV); (3) programme control/multiple views (PMV); (4) programme control/key views (PKV). Phase 2: 2 conditions: low learner control/key views (PKV) versus no learner control/key views (SKV). All participants performed a pre‐test, post‐test and test of visuospatial ability. Main outcome measures  A 30‐item post‐test of brain surface anatomy structure identification. Results The PKV group attained the best post‐test score (57.7%) and the PMV group received the worst (42.2%), with the 2 high learner control groups performing in between. For students with low spatial ability, estimated scores are 20% lower for those who saw multiple views during learning. In phase 2, students with the most static condition and no learner control (SKV) performed similarly to those students in the PKV group. Conclusions Multiple views may impede learning, particularly for those with relatively poor spatial ability. High degrees of learner control may reduce effectiveness of learning.

No abstract