Francesco Di Nocera

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Verified

Francesco verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Sapienza University of Rome

Ocular activity is known to be sensitive to variations in mental workload, and recent studies have successfully related the distribution of eye fixations to the mental load. This study aimed to verify the effectiveness of the spatial distribution of fixations as a measure of mental workload and its sensitivity to different types of demands imposed...

The concept and the assessment of mental workload – which is of great importance in the human factors community – has been overlooked in usability/user experience research. Mental workload depends on the characteristics of the interface and the nature of the task, and it may affect both user performance and usability. Mental workload assessment may...

The usability/security trade-off indicates the inversely proportional relationship that seems to exist between usability and security. The more secure the systems, the less usable they will be. On the contrary, more usable systems will be less secure. So far, attempts to reduce the gap between usability and security have been unsuccessful. In this...

Usable security involves designing security measures that accommodate users' needs and behaviors. Balancing usability and security poses challenges: the more secure the systems, the less usable they will be. On the contrary, more usable systems will be less secure. Numerous studies have addressed this balance. These studies, spanning psychology and...

Knowing about a danger is not enough to avoid it. Our daily lives offer countless examples of occasions in which we act imprudently for various reasons, even though we know we are taking risks. Nevertheless, circumstances in which we lack the necessary knowledge can lead us to run into unpleasant or harmful situations without being aware of it. In...

Fatigue in air traffic management (ATM) is a well-recognized safety concern. International organizations like ICAO and EASA have responded by advocating for fatigue risk management systems (FRMSs). EU Regulation 2017/373, implemented in January 2020, mandates specific requirements for air traffic service providers (ANSPs) regarding controller fatig...

Fatigue is a recognized concern in air traffic management, prompting international bodies like ICAO and EASA to advocate for Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRMS). EU Regulation 2017/373, effective since January 2020, imposes specific requirements on air traffic service providers regarding controllers' fatigue, stress, and rostering systems, as pa...

Human behavior plays a significant role in the deterioration of the environment, contributing to issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. To address these challenges, it is crucial to comprehend the factors that influence individual choices concerning resource consumption, waste disposal, sustainable transportation, and environmental ad...

Procrastination may be seen as the outcome of a learning history of delaying the onset of task execution and its completion, both in terms of time and effort. In this study, we examined the performance of 55 university students who carried out two writing tasks consisting of summarizing two academic papers, each within a different time slot (i.e.,...

Knowledge of possible cyber threats as well as awareness of appropriate security measures plays a crucial role in the ability of individuals to not only discriminate between an innocuous versus a dangerous cyber event, but more importantly to initiate appropriate cybersecurity behaviors. The purpose of this study was to construct a Cybersecurity Aw...

A growing trend in UX research is the use of Online Panels (OPs), namely people enrolled in a web platform who have agreed to participate regularly in online studies and/or in the execution of simple and repetitive operations. The effect of the participation of such “professional respondents” on data quality has been questioned in a variety of fiel...

Most Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) must cover uninterrupted work shifts for 24 h a day, seven days a week. The proper planning of a shift schedule requires consideration of at least three elements: the specific characteristics of the controller task, the physiological needs of the operator, and the definition of rest periods within rostering. We...

Past studies using the distribution of eye fixations as an indicator of mental workload are limited to simulations and laboratory tasks. Hence, this assessment strategy has not yet been proven useful in real- world settings. In order to bridge this gap, in this study eye movements of a group of individuals were recorded while driving a car in a sub...

Among the different eye-tracking metrics, both the entropy-based analysis of the scanpath and the spatial distribution of fixations points have been suggested as indices of mental workload. However, they have never been directly compared so far. In this study, eye movements were recorded from fourteen subjects while performing a visuo-spatial task...

This paper describes the first edition of the Human-Centered Cybersecurity workshop, held in conjunction with CHItaly 2019. Cyber attacks have been increasing in the recent years. Although users have been identified as one of the major security weaknesses in today's technologies, many cyber-attack preventions focus on systems and technology without...

Cyber attacks are emerging as problems caused not only by technological aspects but also by human factors neglected when designing interactive systems. In this paper, we show how one of the most popular attacks on the Web, phishing, is very much related to UI aspects and how a wrong UI design determines a greater vulnerability of users. We performe...

Though the Corsi block-tapping task (CBT) is widely used for assessing visuospatial memory, information about what exactly it measures is still debated. We investigated such issue by observing how motor, visual, and spatial secondary tasks affect the performance on three versions of the CBT. Results showed a double dissociation pattern, wherein two...

There is increasing interest in the readability of text presented on small digital screens. Designers have come up with novel text presentation methods, such as moving text from right to left, line-stepping, or showing successive text segments such as phrases or single words in a RSVP format. Comparative studies have indicated that RSVP is perhaps...

Most of the information and data visualization studies have been conducted in contexts where human performance is related to safety and productivity (e.g., signal detection in air traffic control) or where user experience is connected to revenues (e.g., e-commerce websites page layout and pictorial representations). Nevertheless, the pervasive digi...

In the framework of the AVI 2018 Conference, the interuniversity center ECONA has organized a thematic workshop on "Digital Interaction: where are we going?". Six contributions from the ECONA members investigate different perspectives around this thematic.

Several studies have demonstrated that the processing of visuospatial memory for locations in reaching space and in navigational space is supported by independent systems, and that the coding of visuospatial information depends on the modality of the presentation (i.e., sequential or simultaneous). However, these lines of evidence and the most comm...

Automatic document summarization (ADS) has been introduced as a viable solution for reducing the time and the effort needed to read the ever-increasing textual content that is disseminated. However, a successful universal ADS algorithm has not yet been developed. Also, despite progress in the field, many ADS techniques do not take into account the...

There is increasing interest in the readability of text presented on small digital screens. Designers have come up with novel text presentation methods, such as moving text from right to left, line-stepping, or showing successive text segments such as phrases or single words in a RSVP format. Comparative studies have indicated that RSVP is perhaps...

Genetic studies are enlightening how the expression of several genes influences neuronal activity and all facets of human normal and abnormal behaviour. Among these, a growing body of information shows that a few key genes regulating activity of central neurotransmitters have specific roles in cognitive and/or emotional processes, as ‘procrastinati...

Feature at a glance: Although a lack of safety features is often reported as the most important factor in tractor accidents, an accident per se is the outcome of many elements, including the amount of attentional control operators exert over the driving task. The lack of active attentional control is sometimes referred as “absentmindedness,” and ma...

Benedetto et al. (2015) compared regular reading and Rapid Serial Visual Presentation for comprehension, visual fatigue, performance, mental workload, and ocular behavior. We further investigated the relation between RSVP and comprehension in two studies involving a total of 172 participants. We used two presentation speed conditions: one that was...

Benedetto et al. (2015) compared regular reading and Rapid Serial Visual Presentation for comprehension, visual fatigue, performance, mental workload, and ocular behavior. We further investigated the relation between RSVP and comprehension in two studies involving a total of 172 participants. We used two presentation speed conditions: one that was...

Treadmills are increasingly loaded with digital technology for assisting the individual during the workout sessions by providing information for tracking relevant training parameters. Also, this technology makes exercise more pleasurable by keeping the user connected to her/his digital ecosystem (e.g. social networking, access to multimedia content...

Many everyday tasks, such as driving and reading technical reports, require sustained attention. These tasks may deplete attentional resources and/or lead to mind wandering, boredom and fatigue – cognitive states that result in impaired performance. Numerous competing theories exist to explain these performance decrements. In this panel, we will ex...

This short paper describes an update of A Simple Tool For Examining Fixations (ASTEF) developed for facilitating the examination of eye-tracking data and for computing a spatial statistics algorithm that has been validated as a measure of mental workload (namely, the Nearest Neighbor Index: NNI). The code is based on Matlab® 2013a and is currently...

The primary goal of this study was the assessment of maritime operators’ mental workload in simulation scenarios designed for containing typical traffic situations to be handled by officers during usual routine ship navigation. Taskload was manipulated throughout the sessions to analyse changes in ocular activity during complexity peaks. Specifica...

Current railway Automation & Control Systems allow centralizing the traffic management for a growing number of rail network nodes by using increasingly robust features both for operational and safety interventions. To adequately manage such large set of data it will be necessary to take into account the interaction between Dispatchers and technolog...

INTRODUCTION: Eye fixations can be distributed in three ways: randomly, in clusters, and regularly. However, there is always a continuum among these types, because these spatial patterns are the result of a process evolving over time. The focus of the present work was to study the changes over time observed in the Nearest Neighbor Index (NNI), an i...

Subtle motor activity of the gluteal muscles and legs of the operator sitting in a chair can be obtained by using capacity sensors applied to the seat itself, thus making viable to easily record variations in motor restlessness during the execution of a task. The present study was aimed at studying the relation between variations in mental workload...

Over two decades ago, the cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) was introduced as a tool for obtaining information concerning the frequency of everyday errors. Since then errors have been related to the construct of error proneness, which is supposed to be a steady trait in any individual. The CFQ has been adapted for populations other than Englis...

Avere una presenza on-line costituisce oggi un importante indicatore di credibilità e successo per le organizzazioni. Essere privi di un sito Internet rappresenta uno svantaggio competitivo, ma allo stesso tempo una visibilità on-line di scarsa qualità può danneggiare aziende ed enti che vogliano offrire informazioni, servizi o prodotti ai propri c...

The classic approach to the concept of "Level Of Automation" (LOA) is qualitative in nature: it simply describes the trading of system control between humans and computers. Since Sheridan's seminal work many taxonomies have been proposed, but they are all domain- and task-dependent. This makes it difficult to compare results from different studies....

Improvements in bandwidth and computing led towards a growth of technological solutions in services. Also, users developed expectations and skills in their interaction with technology. Despite web and mobile technology makes available a great deal of advanced and engaging apps (e.g., social and geo-localized), less-sophisticated and appealing syste...

Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) changes analogical radio in a new media where images, video and hypertext contents are added to the "traditional" audio services. The shift to the digital broadcasting technology has shown several advantages such as an enhancement in the audio quality, an increased number of available stations and availability of br...

The concept of Situation Awareness (SA) has captured the interest of many Human Factors professionals and researchers who were interested in the dynamic interaction between human operators and technological systems. However, others have responded to this construct with a great deal of scepticism. Indeed, SA definitions often neglected a careful sta...

The present study aims to identify the relationship between physical (e.g., confinement) and social-psychological (e.g. loneliness) stress factors and the modification of cognitive control processes. Although psychological effects of extended isolation have been investigated, the relationship between control processes and adaptation to an isolated...

In three experiments, participants performed two tasks concurrently during driving. In the peripheral detection task, they responded manually to visual stimuli delivered through a LED placed on the internal rear mirror; in the conversation task, they were engaged in a conversation with a passenger, or through earphone-operated, loudspeaker-operated...

Recent studies have shown that statistical indices of spatial dispersion computed over the distribution of fixations could be effectively used to derive a stable measure of the cognitive resources allocated to a task. This approach is particularly appealing, given that it allows computing a workload value with a 1-minute resolution, thus making it...

People are notably limited in processing information from the outside world. For instance, they frequently fail to identify the second of two targets presented in close succession (attentional blink, AB). Theories of the AB have mostly focused upon early stimuli processing. However, here we show that late, goal-completion processes play an importan...

In human factors and ergonomics research, the analysis of eye movements has gained popularity as a method for obtaining information concerning the operator's cognitive strategies and for drawing inferences about the cognitive state of an individual. For example, recent studies have shown that the distribution of eye fixations is sensitive to variat...

Based on previous research showing the usefulness of spatial statistics in de-tecting randomness in the distribution of eye fixations, this study investigated the ocular behavior of professional pilots engaged in a simulated flight. The distribution of eye fixations was used as an indirect index of mental workload: Eye movements were record-ed duri...

The main aim of this study was to investigate the effects on performance and workload of the shifting between levels of automation: from manual to automatic (forward shift) and from automatic to manual (backward shift). Three levels of difficulty of the Tetris game were implemented as task load conditions. Two versions of the game were also impleme...

This report results from a contract tasking University of Rome 'La Sapienza' as follows: The Grantee investigated the relation between scan path (ocular activity) and mental workload on the basis of the consideration that high workload should produce fixations grouping (because the operator needs to focus on some specific feature of the interface/t...

Humans are fundamentally limited in processing information from the outside world. This is particularly evident in the attentional blink (AB), the impaired ability to identify the second of two targets presented in close succession. We report findings from three experiments showing that the AB is significantly reduced when observers are set to achi...

Based on previous research showing the usefulness of spatial statistics in detecting randomness in the distribution of eye fixations, this study investigated the ocular behavior of professional pilots engaged in a simulated flight. The distribution of eye fixations is here used an index of mental workload. Eye movements were recorded during the dif...

One of the most critical aspects of international teamwork activity is communications, most of which are in English, despite the fact that most of the team members in the world are non-native English speakers. Previous research has demonstrated that apparent spatial separation of communications can lead to substantial improvements in speech intelli...

Human Factors/Ergonomics (HF/E) researchers have investigated the cognitive representation of space in various forms. Application of spatial metaphors to information systems is a well-known example of such research activities. Indeed, spatial metaphors have been used to alleviate disorientation in both 2D and 3D displays, and a great deal of studie...

Air traffic management requires operators to frequently shift between multiple tasks and/or goals with different levels of accomplishment. Procedural errors can occur when a controller accomplishes one of the tasks before the entire operation has been completed. The present study had two goals: first, to verify the occurrence of post-completion err...

This paper introduces a perspective accounting for errors that may occur as a result of the human interaction with the three-dimensional (3D) space. Particularly, we are interested in errors that are caused by cognitively crossing the boundary between peripersonal and extrapersonal space. Several behavioural, neurophysiological, and neuropsychologi...

Visual scanning strategies have been often related to mental workload. In this study it has been investigated the relation between fixations distribution and workload on the basis of the consideration that low workload may be associated with regular patterns, indicating a regular check of the interface layout. According to this hypothesis, statisti...

A simulated space operations environment was used to investigate the effect of changes in the distance between levels of automatio n (LOA) on operator telerobotic performance. Participants were assigned to four exp erimental conditions corresponding to four different LOAs. During the si mulation they both switched and did not switch between these L...

The study reported in this paper was aimed at investigating the existence of schemata specifically involved in the cognitive organization of a web page. Particularly, the hypothesis was that the location of some web objects (namely, links to specific contents) might be expected by the users at specific spatial locations. Using a method providing ge...

The proximity-compatibility principle (PCP) proposed by Wickens and Carswell (1995) is examined on the basis of experimental results obtained with the process-control micro-world AUTO-CAMS. The PCP postulates a performance trade-off in display design that implies that display features that support information integration may degrade focused attenti...

The aim of this study was to explore whether the attentional system, as far as an endogenous orienting is concerned, allocates resources along the sagittal plane and whether such a process is affected by, and is likely to be based on, different functional representations of 3D space in the brain. Several models make a main action-based distinction...

As human spaceflight missions extend in duration and distance from Earth, a self-sufficient crew will bear far greater onboard responsibility and authority for mission success. This will increase the need for automated fault management (FM). Human factors issues in the use of such systems include maintenance of cognitive skill, situational awarenes...

Fault management (FM) performance and information sampling behavior were examined while participants operated a complex micro-world that simulated system failures within a generic life-support system of a spacecraft. One group of participants was supported by an integrated display that facilitated fault identification while the other group had to r...

A model of types and levels of automation was used as a framework for examining the effects of automation support on dynamic fault management performance. The model distinguishes between different levels of automation (LOA) to support information acquisition, information analysis, decision and action selection, and action implementation functions....

For some years, the limits of classic reliability theory have been recognized in favor of the Generalizability Theory, which deals simultaneously with multiple sources of error. This measurement model can be particularly useful when applied to research in cognitive psychophysiology. Indeed, studies in this field often deal with estimated measures w...

Adaptive automation refers to technology that can change its mode of operation dynamically. Further, both the technology and the operator can initiate changes in the level or mode of automation. The present paper reviews research on adaptive technology. The paper is intended as a guide and review for those seeking to use psychophysiological measure...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the lower visual field advantage reported on a number of visual tasks depends on the activity of neural systems which process information from different spaces. To this end, a double dissociation logic was followed by observing the effects of visual and spatial interference on a relocation memory...

Within the classical approach by Norman (1981); action slips are essentially due to activation and triggering of a unappropriate schema. The aim of this study was to investigate action slips starting from the consideration that action is always performed in a space. In our hypothesis, spatial frames of reference could be conceptualized as low level...

We propose the use of the bootstrap resampling technique as a tool to assess the within-subject reliability of experimental modulation effects on event-related potentials (ERPs). The assessment of the within-subject reliability is relevant in all those cases when the subject score is obtained by some estimation procedure, such as averaging. In thes...

The study reported in this paper was aimed at investigating the existence of schemata specifically involved in the cognitive organization of a web page. Particularly, the hypothesis was that the location of some web objects (namely, links to specific contents) might be expected by the users at specific spatial locations. Results confirm that user's...

In previous studies, eye fixations were recorded from participants playing a videogame and from professional pilots during a simulated flight. Ocular data were then analyzed using spatial statistics algorithms, and results showed sensitivity of fixations' dispersion to variations in mental workload. Particularly, a tendency towards spatial randomne...