Christopher A. Sanchez

• Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology
• Professor (Associate) at Oregon State University

Generative AI (genAI) tools, such as ChatGPT or Copilot, are advertised to improve developer productivity and are being integrated into software development. However, misaligned trust, skepticism, and usability concerns can impede the adoption of such tools. Research also indicates that AI can be exclusionary, failing to support diverse users adequ...

The acceleration in affordable hardware has fueled a tremendous increase in the number of Virtual Reality (VR) applications in the learning domain. However, understanding the extent to which existing VR products satisfy instructors’ expectations in teaching university-level classes is crucial to streamlining future design endeavors. We conducted a...

Virtual Reality (VR) research has shown promising benefits in several educational areas, particularly those necessitating interaction with spatial information - a key element in teaching engineering skills such as technical drawing. This paper presents a broad process for designing and developing VR-based instructional activities, ultimately produc...

bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background: Graphs, especially those that are generated automatically, are often subject to mistakes in their processing, framing, and construction, sending unintended messages that neither the viewer nor the author may realize. This article analyzes the...

Structural health monitoring (SHM) can be used to support decision-making processes leading to improved building management plans. With advanced engineered wooden buildings on the rise, SHM has emerged as a critical tool to document behaviour of these structures. However, monitoring data need to be easily accessible and understandable to support in...

Our own past work has shown that, surprisingly, the perceived gender of a robotic comedian does not influence human ratings of the robot’s humorousness, warmth, competence, comfort, or social closeness. This result differed from previous work on gendered robots in other historically gendered roles (e.g., healthcare and security), but the work was a...

Existing research on human perception of robot appearance has focused heavily on anthropomorphism and humanoid robots, with less attention paid to visual form attributes and non-humanoid systems. In this paper, we propose robot visual form attribute traits and a beginning sampling of robot arms with which to expand the understanding of robot visual...

Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of perception within VR are not always accurate. The present study investigates the perception of time within a VR environment by asking for retrospective time judgments of t...

The characteristics that a supervisor of multiple autonomous and semi-autonomous systems should possess remain unclear. Determination of these qualities would support job performance as well as recruiting and training. To evaluate the human characteristics currently being considered by human-in-the-loop experiments, a review of the multiple remote...

Cognitive biases are hardwired behaviors that influence developer actions and can set them on an incorrect course of action, necessitating backtracking. Although researchers have found that cognitive biases occur in development tasks in controlled lab studies, we still do not know how these biases affect developers' everyday behavior. Without such...

Metacognition is often considered a critical component of learning and higher-order cognition; however, does metacognitive accuracy remain constant across all tasks, specifically in tasks that involve physical or procedural components? To investigate the consistency of metacognitive judgments across various task types, participants completed word a...

Previous robotics work has identified significant effects of perceived gender and embodiment on human perceptions of robots, but these topics have yet to be investigated in the context of robot comedy. The presented study explored the effects of gender and embodiment on audience members’ perceptions of a robotic comedian. Participants (N = 153) obs...

Everyday we consume massive amounts of visual information on mobile devices like smartphones. However, are there consequences for viewing information on these devices? In 2 experiments, participants viewed several target objects on two differently sized virtual smartphone displays, and then made a judgment of the size of each target item. Results f...

Human factors/ergonomics is an applied discipline. As such, we question whether students are adequately prepared if they are not learning, at least in part, from instructors who have real-world experience applying human factors/ergonomics knowledge to practical design problems. A wide variety of other disciplines such as medicine, the building trad...

Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of perception within VR are not always accurate. The present study investigates the perception of time within a VR environment by asking for retrospective time judgments of t...

There is a looming shortage of well-trained professionals in the wood construction workforce. To challenge this shortage, we developed a simulated learning environment that leverages a novel Virtual Reality (VR) system to train novice workers in wooden wall construction. A comprehensive task analysis was first used to best identify training require...

Objective Developing and validating a novel domain-agnostic, computer-based training tool for enhancing 2D cross-section understanding of complex 3D structures. Background Understanding 2D cross-sections of 3D structures is a crucial skill in many disciplines, from geology to medical imaging . It requires a complex set of spatial/visualization ski...

All robots create consequential sound -- sound produced as a result of the robot's mechanisms -- yet little work has explored how sound impacts human-robot interaction. Recent work shows that the sound of different robot mechanisms affects perceived competence, trust, human-likeness, and discomfort. However, the physical sound characteristics respo...

Telepresence robots can empower people to work, play, and learn along with others, despite geographic distance. To investigate the use of telepresence robots for remote attendance of university-level classes, we conducted a study in four courses at our university. We compared student experiences attending class during three distinct phases in three...

Understanding 2D cross-sections of 3D structures is a crucial skill in many disciplines, from geology to medical imaging. Cross-section inference in the context of 3D structures requires a complex set of spatial/visualization skills including mental rotation, spatial structure understanding, and viewpoint projection. Prior studies show that experts...

General Audience Summary Research has suggested that telling learners that they are less likely to learn in STEM areas consistent with cultural stereotypes (e.g., females do worse at science), can actually cause learners to learn less. This phenomenon is known as stereotype threat. However, it has also been shown that adding relevant animations to...

Classic studies in cognition have demonstrated that the use of appropriate memory mnemonics can reliably increase recall performance. However, is the facilitative effect of mnemonics consistent across all individuals? As some mnemonics explicitly contain a large visuospatial component, does normal variance in visuospatial aptitudes predict the effe...

Real time data associated with the Building Information Model plays a critical role in the interpretation of the built environment, which is particularly relevant as an increasing number of education facilities and institutions promote sustainable engineering practices and monitoring data available to the public. However, it is challenging for non-...

General Audience Summary Perhaps unsurprisingly, research has shown that when people mindwander away from the task at hand, they remember less correct information about what they were supposed to be learning. However, does mindwandering also cause people to instead learn more incorrect information, or perhaps connect what they were learning in wron...

Previous studies have suggested that simple physical changes in how a text is presented can have profound effects on how a text is learned and processed. Although research on text learning does suggest that physical changes in presentation can impact remembering, it may be possible that presentation differences (e.g., presenting text in multiple sh...

Prior research has suggested that episodes of mind wandering not only negatively impact text comprehension but also are associated with fluctuations in reading behavior. However, these studies typically do not account for differences in the fundamental nature of the text itself, namely, whether it is narrative or expository in structure. As much re...

The creation of false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm has been shown to be sensitive to many factors such as task instructions, participant mood, or even presentation modality. However, do other simple perceptual differences also impact performance on the DRM and the creation of false memories? This study explores the po...

It is common for instruction in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to include dynamic visualizations such as animations and videos in the hopes that they will help learners understand dynamic relationships within the material. Yet, research on dynamic visualizations has shown that they sometimes fail to benefit lea...

Previous research has suggested that differences in the size of extremely large displays can change how individuals perceive and react to the displayed content. However, are such effects also observed on small screen devices (i.e., smartphones)? Participants read a news article on either a small or a large smartphone display and rated their attitud...

Prior research has confirmed that the amount of attention paid to an advertisement will influence its effectiveness when it comes to changing consumer attitudes. This study expands on this understanding by exploring how individual differences in the ability to control attention (i.e., working memory capacity; WMC) might further moderate the effect...

Reductions in perceptual fluency have been shown to negatively impact attitudes towards learning material, but not learning itself. The current study extends this work to spoken presentations and examines whether the presence of a foreign accent negatively affects learners' experience in an online learning environment. Results indicate that the pre...

Previous research has suggested that the use of more authentic learning activities can produce more robust and durable knowledge gains. This is consistent with calls within civil engineering education, specifically hydrology, that suggest that curricula should more often include professional perspective and data analysis skills to better develop th...

Much prior research has shown that retrieval of information from long-term memory (LTM) can influence many aspects of complex cognition in situ. However, research also has shown that not all individuals manage information retrieved from LTM in equivalent fashions. Specifically, high working memory capacity (WMC) individuals have been shown to be be...

Previous research has suggested that the use of more authentic learning activities can produce more robust and durable knowledge gains. This is consistent with calls within civil engineering education, specifically hydrology, that suggest that curricula should more often include professional perspective and data analysis skills to better develop th...

Effective use of the working memory system is critical for successful learning, and this assumption has motivated much of the work on multimedia instruction. Interestingly, the limited capacity of human working memory has been invoked as part of explanations for both advantages and disadvantages of multimedia learning in comparison with learning fr...

The current experiment investigated the effects of a dynamic spatial ability on comprehension of a geoscience text on plate tectonics and the causes of volcanic activity. 162 undergraduates (54% female) from a large public university who had little prior knowledge of this science content area were asked to learn about plate tectonics. Measures of s...

Perceptual manipulations, such as changes in font type or figure-ground contrast, have been shown to increase judgments of difficulty or effort related to the presented material. Previous theory has suggested that this is the result of changes in online processing or perhaps the post-hoc influence of perceived difficulty recalled at the time of jud...

There have been conflicting accounts regarding the effectiveness of animations for learning. Procedural motor learning represents one of the few areas in which animations have consistently shown to be facilitative. Some have suggested that this benefit is related to activation of the mirror neuron system (MNS), with higher activation leading to bet...

A common usage of textual repositories of information is to seek out and gather important information for a specific learning goal. However, not all material is organized in a single location, and users are often forced to visit multiple pages or sources to develop understanding. In these situations, are different learners more or less sensitive to...

Although previous research has demonstrated that performance on visuospatial assessments can be enhanced through relevant experience, an unaddressed question is whether such experience also produces a similar increase in target domains (such as science learning) where visuospatial abilities are directly relevant for performance. In the present stud...

A common usage of the world-wide-web is to seek out and gather important information for a specific learning goal. However, not all material is organized similarly, and assumed implicit conventions are often relied upon to guide users’ search behavior. However, when explicit cues to the conceptual structure of the material are missing or lacking, a...

While the prevalence and use of mobile devices to gather important information is increasing rapidly, a critical question is whether information gathering and reasoning with these devices produces acceptable levels of performance, especially relative to more traditional desktop environments? Across two studies, participants were evaluated on their...

It has been suggested that teaching professional writing students how to think visually can improve their ability to design visual texts. This article extends this suggestion and explores how the ability to think visuospatially influenced students’ success at designing visual texts in a small upper-division class on visual communication. Although a...

It has been suggested that pain perception and attention are closely linked at both a neural and a behavioural level. If pain and attention are so linked, it is reasonable to speculate that those who vary in working memory capacity (WMC) should be affected by pain differently. This study compares the performance of individuals who differ in WMC as...

Abstract: Previous research has suggested that reader goals can affect how well learners develop understanding of complex texts, specifically in science. This chapter discusses the role of students' goals and strategies in acquiring scientific knowledge from multiple expository sources, and supplements previous findings with novel eye-tracking and...

An under-addressed question regarding the usage of small devices is how information gathering from such devices is limited or changed relative to a full-size display? This study explores how factual recall from a text interacts with display size and other text characteristics. In this experiment, participants read several expository texts on either...

The present studies directly test the usefulness of two English-language working memory capacity (WMC) assessments with two samples of students whose native language was not English. Participants completed two widely used complex span tasks, Reading Span (RSpan) and Operation Span (OSpan), in English. To determine whether the well-established relat...

Given the increasing use of small screen devices to gather and provide important information, a critical question is how learning and problem solving performance is impacted by collecting data on a small device. This study investigates how learning and application of information differs when it is gathered using a small screen device versus a norma...

Males traditionally outperform females on measures of both visuospatial ability and science achievement. This experiment directly tests a manipulation designed to compensate for such differences through the presentation of relevant illustrations or animations to support the construction of understanding of a specific scientific phenomenon. Males an...

In two experiments, undergraduates’ evaluation and use of multiple Internet sources during a science inquiry task were examined. In Experiment 1, undergraduates had the task of explaining what caused the eruption of Mt. St. Helens using the results of an Internet search. Multiple regression analyses indicated that source evaluation significantly pr...

The purpose of these experiments was to examine the effects of user characteristics on learning from scrolling interfaces. Although scrolling Web pages are now common, few studies have explored the effects of scrolling on understanding the content that is being conveyed. This set of studies investigated whether presenting text in two particular for...

Three experiments examined the effects of various feedback displays on user preference, apparent waiting durations, waiting time reasonableness, and other user experience measures. User interface guidelines advocate keeping users informed about system status; however, the duration estimation literature shows that focusing on temporal information ma...

This study investigated how the addition of enhanced perceptual detail in a navigation interface interacts with learner characteristics and ultimately impacts learning; specifically memory for a route on a map. Previous research has shown both facilitative and prohibitive effect of adding perceptual detail to user interfaces. However, it is not cle...

The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society is the premier international event for cognitive science work, and it also has been the historical center for interdisciplinary research related to cognition, as well as work that is specifically based on computational cognitive modeling. The objective of this project was to support student attend...

This experiment investigates the effects of three types of feedback, static, dynamic and cumulative progress, designed to keep the user apprised while a computer completes a transaction. Using a simulated online movie store, participants chose movies for various audiences and then were required to wait 15 or 30 seconds for the computer to process t...

This study evaluated how well routes were learned from maps that were either enhanced with actual satellite photography or presented in more traditional (low resolution) form, with no additional detail. The potential interaction between map resolution and participants' static spatial abilities was also considered. Results indicated that learners re...

Despite the overwhelming use of the Internet as an educational/informational resource, research has found that learners are woefully in need of guidance on how to use this resource effectively, and subsequently identify reliable sources of information from unreliable. This study seeks to address this issue through the SEEK training program, which e...

Previous work on learning from text has demonstrated that although illustrated text can enhance comprehension, illustrations can also sometimes lead to poor learning outcomes when they are not relevant to understanding the text This phenomenon is known as the seductive details effect. The first experiment was designed to test whether the ability to...

Successful science learning is often thought to be contingent on the ability to mentally visualize or manipulate relevant spatial information, especially in physical science domains such as earth science, biology, and chemistry (Mathewson, 1999). While this may be the case, there has been little research connecting spatial abilities to learning out...