Joachim Meyer

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at Tel Aviv University

Decision support systems (DSSs) increasingly assist human users who should consider their output and combine it with independently available information when making a decision. Some decision-making events are dynamic, requiring a series of decisions in interdependent stages. In them, users may not use DSS advice optimally, possibly compromising tas...

Objective The study investigates users’ tendency to access decision support (DS) systems as a function of the correlation between the DS information and the information users already have, the ongoing interaction with such systems, and the effect of correlated information on subjective trust. Background Previous research has shown inconclusive fin...

Objective We investigate the impact of event uncertainty, decision support (DS) display format, and DS sensitivity on participants’ behavior, performance, subjective workload, and perception of DS usefulness and performance in a classification task. Background DS systems can positively and negatively affect decision accuracy, performance time, and...

Artificial Intelligence and data science are rapidly gaining importance as parts of decision support systems. As these systems improve, it becomes necessary to clarify humans’ roles in the decision-making processes. Humans may not be able to improve on the choices a good algorithm makes, they may not be able to adjust the parameters of the algorith...

Intelligent systems support human operators’ decision-making processes, many of which are dynamic and involve temporal changes in the decision-related parameters. As we increasingly depend on automation, it becomes imperative to understand and quantify its influence on the operator’s decisions and to evaluate its implications for the human’s causal...

The effective design of decision support systems requires an understanding of how system outputs affect users’ preferences and behavior. In an online experiment with 171 participants, we investigated how uncertainty influences users’ tendency to access additional information when using decision support (DS) with varying levels of reliability (high...

Intelligent systems have become a major part of our lives. Human responsibility for outcomes becomes unclear in the interaction with these systems, as parts of information acquisition, decision-making, and action implementation may be carried out jointly by humans and systems. Determining human causal responsibility with intelligent systems is part...

The rapidly developing AI systems and applications still require human involvement in practically all parts of the analytics process. Human decisions are largely based on visualizations, providing data scientists with details of data properties and the results of analytical procedures. Different visualizations are used in the different steps of the...

Decision Support Systems (DSS) provide users with information that is combined with their existing knowledge or information from other available sources. We investigate how redundancy of the information from the DSS affects the decision to purchase decision support, as well as the use of and trust in the support. Participants performed a classifica...

In numerous applications, alarm systems play an important role, supporting human decision-making. So far, however, little research dealt with the cognitive mechanisms that are at play in alarm-supported decision-making. In the present study, we aim to disentangle underlying cognitive mechanisms by using drift diffusion modeling. The results showed...

Information sharing on social networks is ubiquitous, intuitive, and occasionally accidental. However, people may be unaware of the potential negative consequences of disclosures, such as reputational damages. Yet, people use social networks to disclose information about themselves or others, advised only by their own experiences and the context-in...

Information sharing on social networks is ubiquitous, intuitive, and occasionally accidental. However, people may be unaware of the potential negative consequences of disclosures, such as reputational damages. Yet, people use social networks to disclose information about themselves or others, advised only by their own experiences and the context-in...

We present "PATRED", a technique that uses the addition of redundant information to facilitate the detection of specific, generally described patterns in line-charts during the visual exploration of the charts. We compared different versions of this technique, that differed in the way redundancy was added, using nine distance metrics (such as Eucli...

The 'intuitive' trust people feel when encountering robots in public spaces is a key determinant of their willingness to cooperate with these robots. We conducted four experiments to study this topic in the context of peacekeeping robots. Participants viewed scenarios, presented as static images or animations, involving a robot or a human guard per...

Major legal, philosophical, and scientific discussions regard control over personal information as a cornerstone of users’ fundamental right to privacy. Even though user perceptions of control determine whether and how people exercise their control, little is known about how these perceptions develop. We identify a property of the personal informat...

When humans interact with intelligent systems, their causal responsibility for outcomes becomes equivocal. We analyze the descriptive abilities of a newly developed responsibility quantification model (ResQu) to predict actual human responsibility and perceptions of responsibility in the interaction with intelligent systems. In two laboratory exper...

We present a mesoergonomic approach to the early detection of neonatal sepsis, analyzing clinical data for 4999 patients from a neo-natal intensive care unit to predict positive culture results. The Apgar score at birth predicted positive results. For neonates with poor and intermediate Apgar scores, culture results for monitored infants were more...

In systems with advanced automation, human responsibility for outcomes becomes equivocal. We developed the Responsibility Quantification (ResQu) model to compute a measure of operator responsibility (Douer & Meyer, 2020) and compared it to observed and subjective levels of responsibility (Douer & Meyer, 2019). We used the model to calculate operato...

Binary decision aids, such as alerts, are a simple and widely used form of automation. The formal analysis of a user's task performance with an aid sees the process as the combination of information from two detectors who both receive input about an event and evaluate it. The user's decisions are based on the output of the aid and on the informatio...

Objective We explore users’ and observers’ subjective assessments of human and automation capabilities and human causal responsibility for outcomes. Background In intelligent systems and advanced automation, human responsibility for outcomes becomes equivocal, as do subjective perceptions of responsibility. In particular, actors who actively work...

Focusing on personal information disclosure, we apply control theory and the notion of the Order of Control to study people's understanding of the implications of information disclosure and their tendency to consent to disclosure. We analyzed the relevant literature and conducted a preliminary online study (N = 220) to explore the relationship betw...

Alerting users about possible threats or blocking users’ ability to perform potentially dangerous actions are two common ways to protect systems from the adverse effects of threats, such as malicious email attachments, fraudulent requests, or system malfunctions. We present a normative model of the effects of alerting and blocking on the value of t...

The rapidly developing AI systems and applications still require human involvement in practically all parts of the analytics process. Human decisions are largely based on visualizations, providing data scientists details of data properties and the results of analytical procedures. Different visualizations are used in the different steps of the Mach...

Intelligent systems and advanced automation are involved in information collection and evaluation, decision-making, and the implementation of chosen actions. In such systems, human responsibility becomes equivocal. Understanding human causal responsibility is particularly important when systems can harm people, as with autonomous vehicles or, most...

Focusing on personal information disclosure, we draw from control theory and map the notion of the Order of Control to study people's understanding of the implications of information disclosure and their tendency to consent to disclosure. We performed a literature analysis and conducted a preliminary online study (N = 220) to explore the relationsh...

Ben-Asher and Meyer (2018) developed a model of risk-related behavior in computer systems, named the Triad of Risk-related Behavior (TriRB). It identified three behaviors – the exposure to risk, the use of security features and the responses to security indications. Various factors affected the three behaviors differently. We report an experiment w...

When working with AI and advanced automation, human responsibility for outcomes becomes equivocal. We applied a newly developed responsibility quantification model (ResQu) to the real world setting of a control room in a dairy factory to calculate workers' objective responsibility in a common fault scenario. We compared the results to the subjectiv...

Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), and cyber-insurance are widely used to protect against cyber-attacks and their consequences. The optimal investment in each of these security measures depends on the likelihood of threats and the severity of the damage they cause, on the user’s ability to distinguish between malicious and non-malicious...

AI and advanced automation are involved in almost all aspects of our life. In such systems, human responsibility for outcomes becomes equivocal. We analyze the descriptive abilities of a newly developed responsibility quantification model (ResQu) to predict actual human responsibility and perceptions of responsibility in HCI. In two laboratory expe...

One of the major views of privacy associates privacy with the control over information. This gives rise to the question how controllable privacy actually is. In this paper, we adapt certain formal methods of control theory and investigate the implications of a control theoretic analysis of privacy. We look at how control and feedback mechanisms hav...

Operators often fail to rely sufficiently on alarm systems. This results in a joint human-machine (JHM) sensitivity below the one of the alarm system. The ‘confidence vs. trust hypothesis’ assumes the use of the system depends on the weighting of both values. In case of higher confidence, the task is performed manually, if trust is higher, the user...

One of the major views of privacy associates privacy with the control over information. This gives rise to the question how controllable privacy actually is. In this paper, we adapt certain formal methods of control theory and investigate the implications of a control theoretic analysis of privacy. We look at how control and feedback mechanisms hav...

Societal unrest and similar events are important for societies, but it is often difficult to quantify their effects on individuals, hindering a timely and effective policy-making in emergencies and in particular localized social shocks such as protests. Traditionally, effects are assessed through economic indicators or surveys with relatively low t...

Advanced automation is involved in information collection and evaluation, in decision-making and in the implementation of chosen actions. In such systems, human responsibility becomes equivocal, and there may exist a responsibility gap. Understanding human responsibility is particularly important when systems can harm people, as with autonomous veh...

Objective: We identify three risk-related behaviors in coping with cyber threats-the exposure to risk a person chooses, use of security features, and responses to security indications. The combinations of behaviors that users choose determine how well they cope with threats and the severity of adverse events they experience. Background: End user...

The increased popularity of interconnected devices, which we rely on when performing day-to-day activities expose people to various privacy harms. This paper presents findings from the empirical investigation of privacy concerns. The study revealed that people, regardless of their diversity, perceive privacy harms as generic and simplified models,...

Users rarely ask for help, and they tend to respond negatively to unsolicited help, even when they can benefit from it. It is not clear whether this is due to the way systems provide help or whether people in general dislike unsolicited help. To address this issue the authors studied responses to solicited and unsolicited help from a human adviser...

Part 3: Privacy in the Era of the Smart Revolution

Optimality of any decision, including perceptual decisions, depends on the criteria used to evaluate outcomes and on the assumptions about available alternatives and information. In research settings, these are often difficult to define, and therefore, claims about optimality are equivocal. However, optimality is important in applied settings when...

We report preliminary findings from an online study, identifying people's attitudes toward privacy issues. The results confirm some of the previous research findings regarding demographic and contextual dependencies of privacy perceptions. The research presents a new scale for measuring attitudes to privacy issues that is based on privacy harms. Th...

Decisions in almost all domains of life receive support from automation in the form of alerts, binary cues, recommendations, etc. People often use automation or decision aids without having experience with the system, because the system may be new or because they rarely use it. When such experience is unavailable, people will base their use of the...

Objective: We address the question of necessary conditions for users to adjust system settings, such as alarm thresholds, correctly. Background: When designing systems, we need to decide which system functions users should control. Giving control to users empowers them, but users must have the relevant information and the ability to adjust setti...

Computers communicate with humans in ways that increasingly resemble interactions between humans. Nuances in expression and responses to human behavior become more sophisticated, and they approach those of human-human interaction. The question arises whether we want systems eventually to behave like humans, or whether systems should, even when much...

Indications from alerts or alarm systems can be the trigger for decisions, or they can elicit further information search. We report an experiment on the tendency to collect additional information after receiving system indications. We varied the proclivity of the alarm system towards false positive or false negative indications and the perceived ri...

– The objective of this panel was to discuss issues related to the development and use of autonomous systems, with specific focus on the overriding themes of ethical considerations and potential liability for Human Factors and Ergonomics (HF/E) professionals who are involved in their development. Chris Brill provided opening remarks to frame the di...

Binary cues help operators perform binary categorization tasks, such as monitoring for system failures. They may also allow them to attend to other tasks they concurrently perform. If the time saved by using cues is allocated to other concurrent tasks, users' overall effort may remain unchanged. In 2 experiments, participants performed a simulated...

Preventive maintenance is essential for the smooth operation of any equipment. Still, people occasionally do not maintain their equipment adequately. Maintenance alert systems attempt to remind people to perform maintenance. However, most of these systems do not provide alerts at the optimal timing, and nor do they take into account the time requir...

ABSTRACT Lifeguards at beaches continuously solve dynamic decision problems when allowing people to enjoy the water while minimizing the probability or severity of risk events at the surf. We show that this decision has the characteristics of a naturalistic decision making decision. We analyse the decision as a dynamic, real time decision in which...

The National Academies Board on Human-Systems Integration (BOHSI) has organized this session. An initial presentation by the director of BOHSI will provide information on recent projects and updates. Then a panel will discuss the application of human-systems integration (HSI) to the issue of cyber security. Cyber security attempts to protect device...

The ‘intuitive’ trust people feel when encountering robots in public spaces is a key determinant of their interactions with the systems. To study the trust we presented subjects with static images of a robot performing an access-control task, interacting with younger and older male and female civilians, applying polite or impolite behavior. Our res...

Knowledge-based authentication is the oldest and most widely used form of authentication, but it is still problematic. We present a model of the effects of usage cost variables (e.g., code length, required motion precisions) on authentication performance (time for authentication, error rate) and on the decision to use authentication. We tested mode...

People make numerous decisions that affect their own or others’ privacy, including the decisions to engage in certain activities, to reveal and share information or to allow access to information. These decisions depend on properties of the information to be revealed, the situation in which the decision is made, the possible recipients of the infor...

In this paper we present a space-ship game which allows us to evaluate human behavior with respect to maintenance and repairing malfunctions. We ran an experiment in which subjects played the space-ship game twice. In one of the games, they were simply told that they should perform maintenance every 20 seconds, and in the other game they received a...

Lifeguards at beaches continuously solve dynamic decision problems when allowing people to enjoy the water while minimizing the probability of emergency events. We show that this decision meets the criteria for a naturalistic decision making decision problem, and we analyse the decision as a dynamic, real time decision in which factors, such as the...

Cues in visual scanning task can improve decision accuracy, and they may also affect task performance strategies. We tested the effects of cues on the performance of binary classifications, on the screen scanning procedure participants employed, and on the reported effort in a simulated quality control task. Participants had to decide whether each...

There is limited knowledge on how to design effective interfaces to enable nonexpert users to interact with robot learning algorithms. This paper focuses on an interface design challenge: How to provide the user with sufficient information about the learned behavior. A simulated robotic task where the robot has online learning capabilities was deve...

We develop a predictive model of the perceived complexity of routes in road maps, taking into account the properties of the road, the task and the map display. Sixty subjects ranked the complexity of 120 routes on scales between 0 and 10. Half of them described the route verbally before rating it. Subjects also completed a questionnaire about the i...

Objective: We study the dependence or independence of reliance and compliance as two responses to alarms to understand the mechanisms behind these responses. Background: Alarms, alerts, and other binary cues affect user behavior in complex ways. The suggestion has been made that there are two different responses to alerts--compliance (the tenden...

Maps should be designed so that users can comprehend and use the information. Display decisions, such as choosing the scale at which an area is shown, depend on properties of the displayed information such as the perceived density (PD) of the information. Taking a psychophysical approach we suggest that the PD of information in a road map is relate...

The delivery of personalized news content depends on the ability to predict user interests. We evaluated different methods for acquiring user profiles based on declared and actual interest in various news topics and items. In an experiment, 36 students rated their interest in six news topics and in specific news items and read on 6 days standard, n...

Cognitive engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis, modeling, and design of engineered systems or workplaces in which humans and technologies jointly operate to achieve system goals. As individuals, teams, and organizations become increasingly reliant on information technology and automation, it is more important than ever for s...

We studied the effects of changes of system sensitivity over time and of providing notification about these changes on the responses to binary warnings in a simulated robotic task. Participants had to decide how much risk to take based on the output of a binary warning indicator. Experimental conditions differed in the presence or absence of notifi...

We conducted an experiment to obtain objective measures of responses to binary alerts and subjective reports of the effects of alerts. We focused on the effects of the diagnostic value of the alert. Alerts helped improve performance, and participants responded more strongly and faster to alerts with higher diagnostic value. However, they did not re...

Cognitive engineering and decision making has become central to current human factors and ergonomics research and practice. This trend parallels exciting developments in decision making research in general. Experimental economics and judgment and decision making research boom academically and gain much public attention, while theories and economic...

Binary cueing systems assist in many tasks, often alerting people about potential hazards (such as alarms and alerts). We investigate whether cues, besides possibly improving decision accuracy, also affect the effort users invest in tasks and whether the required effort in tasks affects the responses to cues. We developed a novel experimental tool...

This handbook collects and organizes contemporary cognitive engineering research, drawing on the original research of more than 60 contributing experts. Coverage of human factors, human-computer interaction, and the conceptual foundations of cognitive engineering is extensive, addressing not only cognitive engineering in broader organizations and c...

Alarms, alerts, and other binary cues affect user behavior in complex ways. One relevant distinction is the suggestion that there are two different responses to alerts – compliance (the tendency to perform an action cued by the alert) and reliance (the tendency to refrain from actions as long as no alert is issued). An experiment tested the depende...

Durations are often used to judge the status of an invisible process. However, the apparent duration of an interval depends on the actual duration and on other variables, such as the workload during the interval and the person's expectations. An experiment dealt with the use of durations as an information source on the state of an invisible process...

Providing adaptive help during interaction with the system can be used to assist users in accomplishing their tasks. We propose providing guidance by highlighting the steps required for performing a task that the user intends to complete according to the prediction of a system. We present a study aimed at examining whether highlighting intended use...

This symposium is co-sponsored by the Human Performance Modeling Technical Group (HPM-TG) of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society. Three Research Talks and a Panel Discussion were presented. Each talk used a different style of cognitive modeling and addressed a different problem of interest to the human factors community. For the Panel Dis-cussio...

Information systems increasingly provide options for visually inspecting data during the process of information discovery and exploration. Little research has dealt so far with user interactions with these systems, and specifically with the effects of characteristics of the displayed data and the user on performance with such systems. The study rep...

There is a wide treatment gap between evidence-based guidelines and their implementation in primary care. To evaluate the extent to which physicians "literally" follow guidelines for secondary prevention of dyslipidemia and the extent to which they practice "substitute" therapeutic measures. We performed a post hoc analysis of data collected in a p...

The editor's decision where and how to place items on a screen is crucial for the design of information displays, such as websites. We developed a statistical model that can facilitate automating this process by predicting the perceived importance of screen items from their location and size. The model was developed based on a 2-step experiment in...

The car is rapidly changing. In addition to its traditional driving-related functions it becomes a platform for various services and devices. Some of these are related to the driving task and can improve its ease, comfort and safety, while others are unrelated to driving, and allow the driver to engage in various activities while driving. The aging...

We designed a closed-loop experimental setup that interfaces an insect with a robot for testing phonotaxis (sound recognition and localisation) behaviour in crickets. The experimental platform consists of a trackball mounted on a robot, so that a cricket ...

Mobile phones are rapidly becoming small-size general purpose computers, so-called smartphones. However, applications and data stored on mobile phones are less protected from unauthorized access than on most desktop and mobile computers. This paper presents a survey on users' security needs, awareness and concerns in the context of mobile phones. I...

One way to secure Information Technology (IT) systems is with authentication mechanisms that distinguish between users. Users who differ in their cognitive and motor abilities, cultural background and personal characteristics should be able to operate the IT system including its security features. If system design fails to consider user diversity,...

In this paper, we describe a new approach to analyze the trade-off between usability and security frequently found in security-related user interfaces. The approach involves the simulation of potential user interaction behavior by a mixed probabilistic and rule-driven state machine. On the basis of the simulations, user behavior in security-relevan...

This study examined young (n = 40) and middle-aged (n = 30) adults' susceptibility to comparative optimism and comparative pessimism regarding disability in old age and their willingness to save for long-term care. Participants rated their risk of diverse levels of disability in old age, compared to another similar person, and indicated the amount...

A wide therapeutic gap exists between evidence-based guidelines and their practice in the primary care, which is primarily attributed to physician and patient adherence. This study aims to differentiate physician and patient adherence to dyslipidemia secondary prevention guidelines and various factors affecting it. A post hoc analysis of data colle...

Human interaction is highly intuitive: we infer reactions of our opponents mainly from what we have learned in years of experience and often assume that other people have the same knowledge about certain situations, abilities, and expectations as we do. In human-robot interaction (HRI) we cannot take for granted that this is equally true since HRI...

Abstract This research evaluates the aesthetics and usability of various in-vehicle electronic navigation map configurations. Study 1 adapted the aesthetics scale (Lavie and Tractinsky, 2004) to accommodate evaluations of map displays. Study 2 examined map displays that vary in the amount of data presented, their abstraction level and color schema...

Personalizing news content requires to choose the appropriate depth of personalization and to assess the extent to which readers’ explicit expressions of interest in general and specific news topics can be used as the basis for personalization. A preliminary survey examined 117 respondents’ attitudes towards news content personalization and their i...

The paper examines the positive and the possible adverse effects of adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) in the context of an in-vehicle telematic system as a function of four factors: (1) four different levels of adaptivity (ranging from manual to fully adaptive with intermediate levels); (2) different tasks; (3) routine (familiar) and non-routine (unf...

The output of binary cuing systems, such as alerts or alarms, depends on the threshold setting-a parameter that is often user-adjustable. However, it is unknown if users are able to adequately adjust thresholds and what information may help them to do so. Two experiments tested threshold settings for a binary classification task based on binary cue...

The paper examines the positive and the possible adverse effects of adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) in the context of an in-vehicle telematic system as a function of four factors: (1) four different levels of adaptivity (ranging from manual to fully adaptive with intermediate levels); (2) different tasks; (3) routine (familiar) and non-routine (unf...

Security mechanisms may require users to deal with the tradeoff between risky and efficient or safer yet less efficient use of a production system. We present an experimental sys-tem (microworld), based on the Tetris game, that can serve as a research tool for studying behavior regarding the usabil-ity and security tradeoff. This paper describes th...

Clinical reminders can promote adherence with evidence-based clinical guidelines, but they may also have unintended consequences such as alert fatigue, false alarms and increased workload, which cause clinicians to ignore them. The described clinical reminder system identifies patients eligible for primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases and...