This study examines the effects of age, cognitive resources, and task familiarity on planning performance. Fifty-two young and 52 old adults completed one of two errand-planning tasks. The tasks were matched for structure, difficulty, and format, but differed in content, such that one planning task required planning a real-world shopping tour whereas the other involved planning an unfamiliar sp...

The smooth transitions between turns in natural conversation suggest that speakers often begin to plan their utterances while listening to their interlocutor. The presented study investigates whether this is indeed the case and, if so, when utterance planning begins. Two hypotheses were contrasted: that speakers begin to plan their turn as soon as possible (in our experiments less than a second...

The influence of pre-retirement leisure activity patterns on retirement planning and attitudes toward retirement was investigated. Sixty male retirees answered a questionnaire designed to collect data regarding sociodemographic variables, the degree of preretirement planning, the type and extent of leisure participation before and after retirement, and attitudes about retirement. The results sh...

dry eye is the major contributor to computer vision syndrome. the reductions in the blink rate and amplitude have been considered as the possible mechanisms leading to this condition. the purpose of this study is to evaluate the changes in the lower tear meniscus heights and areas in the computer reading task, in dry eye subjects, with and without soft contact lenses. in this quasi-experimental...

RIFO, as has been proposed by Nebel et al. (Nebel, Dimopoulos, and Koehler 1997), is a method that can automatically detect irrelevant information in planning tasks. The idea is to remove such irrelevant information as a pre-process to planning. While RIFO has been shown to be useful in a number of domains, its main disadvantage is that it is not completeness preserving. Furthermore, the pre-pr...

We present a new approach to the multi-robot path planning problem, where a number of robots are to change their positions through feasible motions in the same static environment. Rather than the usual decoupled planning, we use a coordinated approach. As a result we can show that the method is probabilistically complete, that is, any solvable problem will be solved within a nite amount of time...

The algorithmic generation of textual descriptions of image sequences requires conceptual knowledge. In our case, a stationary camera recorded image sequences of road traffic scenes. The necessary conceptual knowledge has been provided in the form of a so-called Situation Graph Tree (SGT). Other endeavors such as the generation of a synthetic image sequence from a textual description or the tra...

GPS tracking collars, the current method of noninvasively studying large mammals, give limited and undetailed data. The ANIMA project seeks to improve upon tracking collars by creating a tag that integrates a GPS with a magnetometer and an accelerometer. The additional sensors will give information about animal physiology and daily behaviors. To remain a commercially viable option to research s...

One resource playing a critical role in electronically supported decision-making groups is the facilitator. Facilitation is a complex task, encompassing social abilities, pre-meeting planning of decision-making processes and supervising the technology usage during meetings. We found two problems with previous support to electronic facilitation: (1) limited support to planning activities; and (2...