Do dynamic work instructions provide an advantage over static instructions in a small scale assembly task?

Recent studies exploring the effects of instructional animations on learning compared to static graphics have yielded mixed results. Few studies have explored their effectiveness in portraying procedural-motor information. Opportunities exist within an applied (manufacturing) context for instructional animations to be used to facilitate build performance on an assembly line. The present study compares build time performance across successive builds when using animation, static diagrams or text instructions to convey an assembly sequence for a handheld device. Although an immediate facilitating effect of animation was found, yielding a significantly faster build time for Build 1, this advantage had disappeared by Build 3. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Following instructions in a virtual school: Does working memory play a role?

Accumulating evidence that working memory supports the ability to follow instructions has so far been restricted to experimental paradigms that have greatly simplified the practical demands of performing actions to instructions in everyday tasks. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether working memory is involved in maintaining information over the longer periods of time that are more typical of everyday situations that require performing instructions to command. Forty-two children 7–11 years of age completed assessments of working memory, a real-world following-instructions task employing 3-D objects, and two new computerized instruction-following tasks involving navigation around a virtual school to complete a sequence of practical spoken commands. One task involved performing actions in a single classroom, and the other, performing actions in multiple locations in a virtual school building. Verbal working memory was closely linked with all three following-instructions paradigms, but with greater association to the virtual than to the real-world tasks. These results indicate that verbal working memory plays a key role in following instructions over extended periods of activity.

Implicit and explicit processes in a hypothesis testing task

We present the results of two experiments investigating the factors that determine responding on the pseudo-diagnosticity task. In Expt I we manipulated people's beliefs about the degree to which an initial piece of evidence supported a focal hypothesis and found decreased pseudo-diagnostic (PD) responding when the evidence offered low support for the focal hypothesis. In Expt 2 we manipulated the instructions given to participants. We found that instructions to select evidence to help decide between the focal and the complementary hypotheses produced fewer PD responses than both instructions to decide whether the focal hypothesis was the case and instructions to decide whether its complement was the case. The results are interpreted within the framework of recent dual process theories of reasoning.

Fetch Gating Control through Speculative Instruction Window Weighting

In a dynamic reordering superscalar processor, the front-end fetches instructions and places them in the issue queue. Instructions are then issued by the back-end execution core. Till recently, the front-end was designed to maximize performance without considering energy consumption. The front-end fetches instructions as fast as it can until it is stalled by a filled issue queue or some other blocking structure. This approach wastes energy: (i) speculative execution causes many wrong-path instructions to be fetched and executed, and (ii) back-end execution rate is usually less than its peak rate, but front-end structures are dimensioned to sustained peak performance. Dynamically reducing the front-end instruction rate and the active size of front-end structure (e.g. issue queue) is a required performance-energy trade-off. Techniques proposed in the literature attack only one of these effects.
In previous work, we have proposed Speculative Instruction Window Weighting (SIWW) [21], a fetch gating technique that allows to address both fetch gating and instruction issue queue dynamic sizing. SIWW computes a global weight on the set of inflight instructions. This weight depends on the number and types of inflight instructions (non-branches, high confidence or low confidence branches, ...). The front-end instruction rate can be continuously adapted based on this weight. This paper extends the analysis of SIWW performed in previous work. It shows that SIWW performs better than previously proposed fetch gating techniques and that SIWW allows to dynamically adapt the size of the active instruction queue.

Learning curves, taking instructions, and patient safety:using a theoretical domains framework in an interview study to investigate prescribing errors among trainee doctors

ABSTRACT:

Millimeter-Wave Soldier-to-Soldier Communications for Covert Battlefield Operations

Mobile ad hoc networking of dismounted combat personnel is expected to play an important role in the future of network-centric operations. High-speed, short-range, soldier-to-soldier wireless communications will be required to relay information on situational awareness, tactical instructions, and covert surveillance related data during special operations reconnaissance and other missions. This article presents some of the work commissioned by the U. K. Ministry of Defence to assess the feasibility of using 60 GHz millimeter-wave smart antenna technology to provide covert communications capable of meeting these stringent networking needs. Recent advances in RF front-end technology, alongside physical layer transmission schemes that could be employed in millimeter-wave soldier-mounted radio, are discussed. The introduction of covert communications between soldiers will require the development of a bespoke directive medium access layer. A number of adjustments to the IEEE 802.11 distribution coordination function that will enable directional communications are suggested. The successful implementation of future smart antenna technologies and direction of arrival-based protocols will be highly dependent on thorough knowledge of transmission channel characteristics prior to deployment. A novel approach to simulating dynamic soldier-to-soldier signal propagation using state-of-the-art animation-based technology developed for computer game design is described, and important channel metrics such as root mean square angle and delay spread for a team of four networked infantry soldiers over a range of indoor and outdoor environments is reported.

Behavior-Based branch prediction by dynamically clustering branch instructions

Conditional branches frequently exhibit similar behavior (bias, time-varying behavior,...), a property that can be used to improve branch prediction accuracy. Branch clustering constructs groups or clusters of branches with similar behavior and applies different branch prediction techniques to each branch cluster. We revisit the topic of branch clustering with the aim of generalizing branch clustering. We investigate several methods to measure cluster information, with the most effective the storage of information in the branch target buffer. Also, we investigate alternative methods of using the branch cluster identification in the branch predictor. By these improvements we arrive at a branch clustering technique that obtains higher accuracy than previous approaches presented in the literature for the gshare predictor. Furthermore, we evaluate our branch clustering technique in a wide range of predictors to show the general applicability of the method. Branch clustering improves the accuracy of the local history (PAg) predictor, the path-based perceptron and the PPM-like predictor, one of the 2004 CBP finalists.

Creating a Circus of Words, Music, and Sound: From Roaratorio to Owenvarragh

This article documents the creation of a work by the authors based on a score written by the composer John Cage entitled 'Owenvarragh: A Belfast Circus on The Star Factory.' The article is part of a documentary portfolio in the journal which also includes a volume of the poetry created by Dowling in accordance with the instructions of the Cage score, and a series of documentary videos on the creation of the work and its first performance. Cage's score is based on his work 'Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegan's Wake' (1979) and it provides a set of detailed instructions for the musical realisation of a literary work. The article documents this first fully realised version of the score since Cage first produced 'Roaratorio' in 1979. The work, which was motivated by the Cage centenary year in 2012, musically realises Carson's book 'The Star Factory' (1998), a novelestic autobiography of Carson's Belfast childhood. The score required the creation of a fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings of the sounds and places mentioned in the book, a volume of poetry created from the book which is recited to form the rhythmic spine of the work, and the arrangement of a performance including these two components along with live musical performance by the authors in collaboration with three other musicians under their direction, and a video installation created for the work. The piece has been performed three times: in association with the Sonorities 2012 Festival at Queen's University of Belfast (March 2012), at The Belfast Festival at Queen's (October 2012), and in the Rymer Auditoium of the University of York (June 2013).

Additional information:

The work which the article documents was conceived by Monaghan and Dowling, and the project was initiated by Monaghan after a she received a student prize to support its development and first performance. Elements of the project will be included in her PhD dissertation for which Dowling is a supervisor. Monaghan created the fixed media piece based on over 300 field recordings, the largest single aspect of realising Cage's score. Dowling was responsible for initiating the collaboration with Ciaran Carson, and for two other components: the creation of a volume of poetry derived from the literary work which is recited in the performance, and the creation of and supervision of the technical work on a video which accompanies the piece. The co-authors consulted closely during the work on these large components from May 2011 until March 2012 when the first performance took place. The co-authors also shared in numerous other artistic and organisational aspects of the production, including the arrangement and performnance of the music, musical direction to other performers, and marketing.

Instructional Methods For Optimal Learning For An Aerospace Assembly Task: digital animation v pictogram-based instructions

Previous studies on work instruction delivery for complex assembly tasks have shown that the mode and delivery method for the instructions in an engineering context can influence both build time and product quality. The benefits of digital, animated instructional formats when compared to static pictures and text only formats have already been demonstrated. Although pictograms have found applications for relatively straight forward operations and activities, their applicability to relatively complex assembly tasks has yet to be demonstrated. This study compares animated instructions and pictograms for the assembly of an aircraft panel. Based around a series of build experiments, the work records build time as well as the number of media references to measure and compare build efficiency. The number of build errors and the time required to correct them is also recorded. The experiments included five participants completing five builds over five consecutive days for each media type. Results showed that on average the total build time was 13.1% lower for the group using animated instructions. The benefit of animated instructions on build time was most prominent in the first three builds, by build four this benefit had disappeared. There were a similar number of instructional references for the two groups over the five builds but the pictogram users required a lot more references during build 1. There were more errors among the group using pictograms requiring more time for corrections during the build.

Following instructions from working memory: Why does action at encoding and recall help?

Two experiments investigated the consequences of action at encoding and recall on the ability to follow sequences of instructions. Children aged 7–9 years recalled sequences of spoken action commands under presentation and recall conditions that either did or did not involve their physical performance. In both experiments, recall was enhanced by carrying out the instructions as they were being initially presented and also by performing them at recall. In contrast, the accuracy of instruction-following did not improve above spoken presentation alone, either when the instructions were silently read or heard by the child (Experiment 1), or when the child repeated the spoken instructions as they were presented (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that the enactment advantage at presentation does not simply reflect a general benefit of a dual exposure to instructions, and that it is not a result of their self-production at presentation. The benefits of action-based recall were reduced following enactment during presentation, suggesting that the positive effects of action at encoding and recall may have a common origin. It is proposed that the benefits of physical movement arise from the existence of a short-term motor store that maintains the temporal, spatial, and motoric features of either planned or already executed actions.

Virtual Reality as a tool to Assist Learning in Aerospace Assembly

This study examines whether virtual reality (VR) is more superior to paper-based instructions in increasing the speed at which individuals learn a new assembly task. Specifically, the work seeks to quantify any learning benefits when individuals have been given the opportunity and compares the performance of two groups using virtual and hardcopy media types to pre-learn the task. A build experiment based on multiple builds of an aircraft panel showed that a group of people who pre-learned the assembly task using a VR environment completed their builds faster (average build time 29.5% lower). The VR group also made fewer references to instructional materials (average number of references 38% lower) and made fewer errors than a group using more traditional, hard copy instructions. These outcomes were more pronounced during build one with differences in build time and number of references showing limited statistical differences.