ABSTRACT

Comprehension in the Wild:

Understanding or comprehending what is happening from moment to moment has been studied under the rubrics of discourse processing when it comes to reading a story and situation awareness when we are operating in a dynamic environment. I will report on a variety of studies in dynamic domains such as air traffic control and critical care nursing. A variety of empirical studies led me to a view of dynamic environments based on discourse processing models but supplemented with strategic management processes.

AUTHOR BIO

Francis T. (Frank) Durso is Professor of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Coordinator of the Engineering Psychology program.  Frank received his Ph.D. from SUNY at Stony Brook and his B.S. from Carnegie-Mellon University. Frank is senior editor of Wiley’s Handbook of Applied Cognition, and co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Human Systems Integration. He co-authored Stories of Modern Technology Failures and Cognitive Engineering Successes. He is associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied and has served on the editorial boards of several others as well as on panels for NSF and NASA.  He was on the American Psychological Association (APA) Presidential Task Force on Psychology in the STEM disciplines and served as an advisor on NextGen to the GAO. He has been funded by NSF, DOE, and the FAA, the latter continuously since 1991. He has just begun a three-year contract with CSX railway.  Frank is the 2011 recipient of APA’s Franklin Taylor Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology. His current research interests focus on cognitive and strategic factors responsible for managing and updating dynamic situations such as those found in air traffic control.