Roger W Schvaneveldt

• PhD University of Wisconsin
• Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine protects adolescents and young adults from 9 high-risk HPV virus types that cause 90% of cervical and anal cancers and 70% of oropharyngeal cancers. This study extends our previous research analyzing online content concerning the HPV vaccination in social media platforms used by young adults, in which we used...

Applied cognitive psychology occupies the large gulf between basic cognitive psychology and the development of useful and usable cognitive artifacts. Cog-nitive artifacts are human-made objects, devices, and systems that extend people's abilities in high-level perception; encoding and storing information in memory, as well as retrieving it from mem...

This study demonstrates the use of distributed vector representations and Pathfinder Network Scaling (PFNETS) to represent online vaccine content created by health experts and by laypeople. By analyzing a target audience's conceptualization of a topic, domain experts can develop targeted interventions to improve the basic health knowledge of consum...

This paper explores a new technique for encoding structured information into a semantic model, for the construction of vector representations of words and sentences. As an illustrative application, we use this technique to compose robust representations of words based on sequences of letters, that are tolerant to changes such as transposition, inse...

In this paper we extend the Predication-based Semantic Indexing (PSI) approach to search efficiently across triple-predicate pathways in a database of predications extracted from the biomédical literature by the SemRep system. PSI circumvents the combinatorial explosion of possible pathways by converting the task of traversing individual predicatio...

In this paper we utilize methods of hyperdimensional computing to mediate the identification of therapeutically useful connections for the purpose of literature-based discovery. Our approach, named Predication-based Semantic Indexing, is utilized to identify empirically sequences of relationships known as "discovery patterns", such as "drug x INHIB...

This paper addresses the issue of analogical inference, and its potential role as the mediator of new therapeutic discoveries, by using disjunction operators based on quantum connectives to combine many potential reasoning pathways into a single search expression. In it, we extend our previous work in which we developed an approach to analogical re...

In this paper, we investigate the ability of the Predication-based Semantic Indexing (PSI) approach, which incorporates both symbolic and distributional information, to support inference on the basis of structural similarity. For example, given a pair of related concepts prozac:depression, we attempt to identify concepts that relate to a third conc...

The Predication-based Semantic Indexing (PSI) approach encodes both symbolic and distributional information into a semantic space using a permutation-based variant of Random Indexing. In this paper, we develop and evaluate a computational model of abductive reasoning based on PSI. Using distributional information, we identify pairs of concepts that...

Unlabelled: Background. EpiphaNet is an interactive knowledge discovery system which enables researchers to explore visually sets of relations extracted from MEDLINE using a combination of language processing techniques. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and methodological foundations of the system, and evaluate the utility of the models t...

Abductive reasoning includes discovering new hypotheses or explanations. This chapter identifies several factors involved in abductive reasoning in an effort to move toward a theory of such reasoning. The chapter has an ultimate focus on the nature and influence of similarity. A major goal of our work is to develop computational tools that provide...

The paradigm of literature-based knowledge discovery originated by Swanson involves finding meaningful associations between terms or concepts that have not occurred together in any previously published document. While several automated approaches have been applied to this problem, these generally evaluate the literature at a point in time, and do n...

Corpus-derived distributional models of semantic distance between terms have proved useful in a number of applications. For both theoretical and practical reasons, it is desirable to extend these models to encode discrete concepts and the ways in which they are related to one another. In this paper, we present a novel vector space model that encode...

Pathfinder network scaling has been used widely to assess knowledge acquisition and inform interface design. While a large body of research agrees on the validity of this technique to develop knowledge structures, the rating task becomes cumbersome when users are faced with a large number of concepts to relate. Thus, a new rating method was created...

The discovery of implicit connections between terms that do not occur together in any scientific document underlies the model of literature-based knowledge discovery first proposed by Swanson. Corpus-derived statistical models of semantic distance such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) have been evaluated previously as methods for the discovery of...

We sought to improve understanding of visual perception in aviation to mitigate mishaps in approaches to landing. Research has attempted to identify the most salient visual cues for glide path performance in impoverished visual conditions. Numerous aviation accidents caused by glide path overestimation (GPO) have occurred when a low glide path was...

We have shown how an experimental technique borrowed from cognitive psychology, the Lexical Decision Task, can be used to study morphology. In particular, we have shown that native speakers of English respond positively more often to novel words of the form Xiveness than they do to words of the form Xivity, a result which was predicted from the gre...

Questionnaire data were obtained from 71 pilots, some categorized as novice pilots and others as experienced pilots according to overall flight hours. The form required the participants to rank various items of weather information by phase of flight on a scale of relative importance. Responses indicated that both novice and experienced pilots rank...

Review of Dietrich, E., & Markman, A. B. (Eds.) (2000). Cognitive dynamics: Conceptual and representational change in humans and machines. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. The stated objective of Cognitive Dynamics is to defend the representational/ computational theory (R/CT) in cognitive science against various criticisms. Starting from the view tha...

In 1 project, 27 pilots rated the priority of information required for flight. These pilots were divided by flight experience into novices (65 - 820 hrs) and experienced pilots (1,600 to 17,000 hrs). Participants rated 29 information elements across 7 phases of flight. These data show the shifting priorities of information across phases of flight,...

In the first project of the study, 27 pilots rated the priority of information required for flight. These pilots were divided by flight experience into novices (65 to 820 hours' flight time) and experienced pilots (1600 to 17,000 hours' flight time). Participants rated 29 information elements across seven phases of flight. These data show the shifr...

In two experiments, we examined the extent to which knowledge of sequential dependencies and/or patterns of repeating elements is used during transfer in artificial grammar learning. According to one view of transfer, learners abstract the grammar's sequential dependencies and then learn a mapping to new vocabulary at test (Dienes, Altmann, & Gao,...

Two experiments used a novel method called Pathfinder to examine whether the salience of temporal cues embedded in event structure increases developmentally and whether people link event actions by simple adjacency relationships or embed them in an organized whole. A sequential format for eliciting knowledge was compared with a less structured form...

Limitations of using fixed sequences of events in studies of learning in the sequential reaction-time task led us to develop a probabilistic version of the task. When sequences occur probabilistically, transitions usually follow a sequence, but with some small probability, events occur out of sequence. This variation on the paradigm provides new ev...

The primary objective of the research project was to investigate models for monitoring and predicting subjective workload in the control of complex systems. Such models would enable systems to use workload levels to distribute tasks optimally in addition to identifying levels of workload, which could lead to a serious breakdown in performance. In t...

Knowledge representation was used to characterize beliefs in patients with Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (EI/MCS). EI/MCS patients, allergy and asthma patients, doctors and controls made relatedness judgments on concepts relevant to EI/MCS. Associative networks showed that EI/MCS patients viewed these concepts differently from...

Retention of skilled search after a nine-year period of nonuse was investigated in letter and digit tasks. The letter task involved search for one of six consistently mapped letter targets in a set of two, three, or four letters. The digit task required subjects to indicate the largest digit in a display of two, three, or four digits (one through n...

Ss were trained on letter pairs or letter strings in an artificial grammar learning paradigm to determine the extent to which implicit learning is driven by simple associative knowledge. Learning on strings resulted in sensitivity to violations of grammaticality and in transfer to a changed letter set. Learning on letter pairs resulted in less sens...

The primary goal of this project was to explore the applicability of artificial neural network (NN) models in the domain of air combat maneuvering (ACM). The work investigated several models: (a) NN models that select ACM on the basis of training with the production rules of a model, Air Combat Expert Simulation (ACES); (b) NN models that mimic the...

Task analysis (TA) in systems design has a number of goals, including identifying information needed by the user, knowledge and skills that the user needs, and potential errors that the user might make. However, a necessary precursor to TA is to determine what the important tasks are in the first place. This research is aimed at developing a method...

Reviews the book, Conditioning, Cognition, and Methodology: Contemporary Issues in Experimental Psychology by Joseph B. Sidowski (Ed.) (see record 1989-98619-000 ). A thorough review of David Grant's career as teacher, editor, and researcher is ably presented by William F. Prokasy in the introductory chapter. The remainder of the book's chapters co...

network models have played important roles in various areas of cognitive science and computer science / we have developed a procedure called Pathfinder (several equivalent procedures, actually) to generate a class of networks called PFNETs [Pathfinder networks], which are based on estimates or measures of distances between pairs of entities gener...

will the sparse Pathfinder networks provide a basis for representing schemata, or are the complete networks of the connectionist variety essential investigates the variation in network performance with different activation schemes / compare the results obtained with activation paradigms to some clustering methods including the familiar hierarchic...

discuss a technique for extracting relatedness information from text along with some potential uses for such information / the method is based on frequency of co-occurrence, that is, the number of times pairs of words occur together in selected units of text / we hypothesize that frequency of co-occurrence provides a reasonable basis for estimating...

This chapter discusses network representations and their relationship to proximity data. Proximity data are commonplace in the social and behavioral sciences. Networks have several properties that should be of value in representing the structure in proximity data. Networks reduce a large number of pairwise proximities to a smaller set of links. Com...

This paper is primarily expository, relating elements of graph theory to a computational theory of psychological similarity (or dissimilarity). A class of networks called Pathfinder networks (PFNETs) is defined. PFNETs are derived from estimates of dissimilarity for pairs of entities. Thus, PFNETs can be used to reveal aspects of the structure inhe...

The cognitive organization of a set of abstract programming concepts was investigated in subjects who varied in degree of computer programming experience. Relatedness ratings on pairs of the concepts were collected from naive, novice, intermediate, and advanced programmers. Both individual and group network representations of memory structure were...

This paper investigates the effects of computer programming skills on the writing of ordinary instructions. Three computer experience groups (Naive, Beginner, Advanced) wrote telephone directory instructions to one of three targets (another person, George Washington, or an English-understanding computer). Each subject performed this task twice, suc...

Models of users' procedural knowledge were derived from the records of command usage obtained from nine experienced users of the Unix operating system. Pairwise transitions between user command entries were analyzed for the purpose of identifying salient command patterns associated with task-based user behaviors. Structural models of command usage...

Recent research has suggested that visual-search functions will become shallower with practice, but only if the stimuli and responses are consistently mapped. We tested the necessity of consistent mapping for the phenomenon by asking subjects to report the largest digit in a visual display. Despite the fact that we used a varied-mapping task, signi...

A 2-year research and development effort was conducted to develop an artificial intelligence model of pilot decision making in air to air combat maneuvering. A desktop training system to allow student pilots to learn about conditions that call for particular maneuvers by interacting with the model in mock combat scenarios was developed. The model,...

Investigated in 2 experiments with 180 undergraduates the relations between recall performance and specific network and spatial representations of memory in serial and free recall paradigms. The structural representations were derived from relatedness ratings by using the alternating least squares scaling, Kruskal-Young-Shepard-Torgerson (J. B. Kru...

In three experiments, subjects learned to classify dot patterns into three categories represented by either three, six, or nine exemplars. Following learning, subjects were tested on an additional set of patterns, which included patterns from the learning phase, the category objective prototypes, and new distortions of the objective prototypes. Als...

This paper reviews the current status of a project designed to develop a simulation model of decision making by expert fighter-pilots in air-to-air combat. The model builds on our previous work on measuring and representing conceptual structures by using those structures to model the underlying processes involved in flying high-speed tactical aircr...

In this paper we propose a formal interface design methodology based on user knowledge. The general methodology consists of 1) obtaining distance estimates for pairs of system units (objects, actions, concepts), 2) transforming the distance estimates using scaling techniques (e.g., Pathfinder network analysis), and 3) organizing the system interfac...

Different perspectives lead one to see different aspects of the same thing. The papers and discussions at the Advanced Study Institute (ASI) reflect this truism. I intend to draw out some of the varving perspectives on intelligent decision support systems (IDSS) and to examine some of the themes and issues that arise naturally out of these perspect...

This report reviews work on defining and measuring conceptual structures of expert and novice fighter pilots. Individuals with widely varying expertise were tested. Cognitive structures were derived using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and link-weighted networks (Pathfinder). Experience differences among pilots were reflected in the conceptual stru...

This report reviews work in defining and measuring conceptual structures of critical flight information in Air Force fighter pilots. Groups of pilots with widely varying expertise were tested. Cognitive structures were defined by multidimensional scaling (MDS) and general weighted networks (GWN). The structures were validated by recovering the expe...

Computer-based decision support systems are being designed to enhance the human decision-maker's inherent information-processing abilities. Previous research has shown that integrality and separability of stimulus dimensions affect performance in perceptual and cognitive processing of multidimensional stimuli. We found that, in a multiple-cue proba...

The PSYCHLAB system is designed to facilitate the task of writing experimental control programs. The system consists of two major components: (1) a collection of procedures and functions to facilitate presenting stimuli, collecting responses, and measuring response times and (2) a high-level language (LAB-TALK) designed to organize and sequence eve...

Developed an activation–verification model for letter and word recognition that yields predictions of 2-alternative forced-choice performance for 864 individual stimuli that are either words, orthographically regular nonwords, or orthographically irregular nonwords. The model explains why letters embedded in words are recognized more accurately tha...

This paper reviews work that has been done on defining and measuring conceptual structures of critical flight information in Air Force fighter pilots. Individuals with widely varying flight experience were tested. Cognitive structures were defined by analytic procedures; e.g., Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and General Weighted Networks (GWN). The...

Investigated the effects of semantic relatedness on categorization performance with 24 undergraduates. A different pair of categories was used in 6 tasks: vowel–nonword, good–bad, plant–animal, natural–artificial, and noun–verb. For the 1st 3 category pairs, relatedness facilitated both "same" and "different" decisions when Ss judged whether 2 item...

A common approach to designing human-computer decision systems is to divide decision tasks between the person and the computer. The success of this approach depends on knowledge of the specific task components and their interactions, information important for allocating tasks to man and machine. Such knowledge is often unavailable for complex, real...

Six experiments with 144 undergraduates tested the hypothesis that semantic context facilitates the encoding of words related to the context. Different tasks (making a lexical decision, detecting a rotated letter in a word, or detecting a gap in one letter of a word) and different experimental paradigms (tachistoscopic exposures with masking stimul...

This study employs a lexical-decision task to investigate children's use of semantic context in word recognition. Previous studies have shown that young children do not use contextual factors in word recognition as much as older children do. However, these studies do not distinguish between knowledge of contextual structure (syntactic and semantic)...

Several recent experiments have shown that an appropriate semantic context facilitates word recognition. Lexical (word/nonword) decisions about a word such as "nurse" are faster when it follows a related word such as "doctor". The present experiment examines the consequence of varying the proportion of semantically related adjacent words. The effec...

Some alternative hypotheses about the recognition of ambiguous words are considered. According to the selective-access hypothesis, prior semantic context biases people to access one meaning of an ambiguous word rather than another in lexical memory during recognition. In contrast, the nonselectiveaccess hypothesis states that all meanings of the wo...

Although people experience little difficulty in recognizing printed words and comprehending sentences, they cannot do it instantaneously. Experimental psychologists have recently measured the speed of these mental processes by applying a reaction-time method. The method provides new data concerning the organization and retrieval of familiar semanti...

Previous investigators have argued that printed words are recognized directly from visual representations and/or phonological representations obtained through phonemic recoding. The present research tested these hypotheses by manipulating graphemic and phonemic relations within various pairs of letter strings. Ss in two experiments classified the p...

Two major hypotheses are currently at issue concerning the effects of semantic context on ambiguous word recognition: (1) the selective-retrieval hypothesis (SRH) maintains that a single meaning is retrieved from memory, and (2) the nonselective-retrieval hypothesis maintains that all meanings are retrieved from memory. To help clear up this contro...

Presented 2 strings of letters simultaneously, with 1 string displayed visually above the other, to high school students (n = 24). In exp. I, ss responded "yes" if both strings were words, otherwise responding "no." in exp. Ii, ss responded "same" if the 2 strings were either both words or both nonwords, otherwise responding "different." "yes" resp...

Variations in the mapping of numerical stimuli onto numerical-verbal responses in a choice RT task employing 90 undergraduates revealed similar effects of uncertainty (number of stimulus-response S-R alternatives) for naming, adding 1, and subtracting 1. No increase in RT accompanied an increase in the number of S-R alternatives from 4-8 in these c...

Investigated the effects of age (12-15 yr. olds vs. 35-45 yr. olds), sex, and type of constraint on the randomization of events using 40 Ss. Each S was required to guess which of 2 colors of poker chips would be drawn next. Results indicate: (a) males reach a higher lever of predicting the more frequent event than females; (b) the contingent situat...

This volume represents the first complete presentation of the theory and application of Pathfinder networks. These networks are derived from proximity data, and they have many applications in cognitive modeling, user-computer interface design, and knowledge engineering. The chapters range from the theoretical and empirical to applied work with Path...

In this chapter, I explore several themes in connection with a selective review of some research problems I have pursued over the years. The study of meaning is a major theme along with issues relating to the goals of scientific psychology and the demands of research on applied problems. Finally, I ponder the role of psychology in the broader scien...

Researchers have attempted to measure pilot knowledge and changes in knowledge, in both simulated and live-fly events. However, measurement in these training environments has been more successful in measuring overall flight performance outcomes rather than on underlying changes in knowledge. Research to assess changes in pilots' knowledge as a resu...

2 experiments investigated the effects of information load (number of alternatives) and stimulus-response code in each of 2 simultaneously performed RT tasks. Ss (total N = 15) were required to make both a verbal and a manual response on each trial in the simultaneous-performance conditions. Each task was also performed alone for comparison The res...

4 experiments, using undergraduates, examined sequential dependencies in choice RT as a function of number of alternatives, stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility, and the intertrial interval (ITI). A 5th experiment investigated guessing strategies. The 2-choice compatible RT data revealed speeded responses to stimuli following certain alternating a...

An orthogonal design was employed to separate the effects of cue associations and cue dimensions in intradimensional (ID) and extradimensional (ED) shifts. Associations between relevant stimulus cues (words) were varied both between and within dimensions (categories). Two control groups were used to measure nonspecific transfer effects. The results...

Probability of positive instances (.125, .25, or .5), the number of relevant stimulus dimensions (1, 2, 3, or 4), and sex of S were factorially combined in a concept-identification task. Trials to criterion were found to increase linearly with the number of relevant stimulus dimensions and log^B2) of the probability of positive instances. The numbe...