Ergonomic implications of manual interaction with visual displays (new title)

触摸屏和手持设备现在很容易获得，并允许更灵活和更好的人体工程学设计的电脑工作场所。从人体工程学的角度来看，有趣但经常被忽视的是，当人们被要求把手放在可视显示器附近时，各种认知功能会发生变化。在这个项目的第一阶段（DFG JA 747/5-1），我们发现手的接近(1)可以使视觉感知受益——然而对于不同的个体（左撇子与右撇子，年轻人与老年人），以及(2)也可以改善感觉融合和调节。将手放在显示器附近可以对认知表现产生有益的影响。然而，它也有不利的影响，正如我们在一个涉及搜索文本中特定字母的任务中所展示的那样。因此，手的接近程度对表现的影响取决于任务的类型，因此也取决于所研究的功能的类型。这需要考虑手接近效应的人体工程学含义。令人惊讶的是，这一领域几乎所有的研究都是基于手静止不动的情况，这并不能代表人们与手持设备的实际互动方式。因此，这项拨款扩展的总体目标是专注于以有意义的方式与视觉显示进行手动交互的实际影响。特别是，我们想要确定手接近效应是如何改变和潜在地改善认知功能的。这将通过采用模拟工作场所任务的实验任务来完成，这些任务反映了与触摸和手持设备交互相关的认知处理（感知、注意力、记忆）的不同方面。另一个目的是进一步研究手接近和手交互对动眼肌功能的影响。双眼眼球运动的记录将用于测量基本视觉任务中的调节和双眼协调，如临床验光，以及更复杂的任务，如阅读。最终目的是探讨年龄和个体差异对手接近效应的影响。年龄的影响是有趣的，因为所有年龄段的人都越来越多地面对交互式视觉显示。此外，我们之前表明，年轻人和老年人具有不同的静态手接近效应模式。为了探索个体差异的作用，我们想研究主观判断的精神努力和视觉应变与客观任务表现的关系，如任务速度和准确性。这应该有助于理解人们是如何偏爱一种设备或交互方式的。我们希望通过研究用户在手动与视觉显示器交互时的体验和执行任务，为计算机工作场所开发有用的人体工程学建议。

Touch screens and hand-held devices are now readily available and allow for a more flexible and better ergonomic design of computer workplaces. What is interesting, but often ignored, about these devices from an ergonomics perspective is that various cognitive functions have been found to change when people are asked to hold their hands near visual displays. In the first phase of this project (DFG JA 747/5-1), we found that hand proximity (1) can benefit visual perception - however in different ways for different individuals (left- vs. right-handers, young vs. old adults), and (2) can also improve both sensory fusion and accommodation. Placing the hands near a display can have beneficial effects on cognitive performance. However, it can also have detrimental effects, as we showed in a task which involved searching for specific letters in a text. Thus, the influence of hand proximity on performance depends on the type of task, and thereby the type of function, one is examining. This needs to be considered for ergonomic implications of hand-proximity effects. Surprisingly, almost all studies in this area are based on the hands being statically held in place, which is not representative of how people actually interact with hand-held devices. Therefore, the general aim of this grant extension is to focus on the practical implications of manually interacting with visual displays in meaningful ways. In particular, we want to establish how hand-proximity effects change and potentially improve cognitive functions. This will be done by employing experimental tasks that simulate tasks at the workplace and that reflect different aspects of cognitive processing (perception, attention, memory) that are relevant for interacting with touch and hand-held devices.Another objective is to further investigate the influence of hand-proximity and manual interaction on oculomotor functions. Recordings of binocular eye movements will be used to measure accommodation and binocular coordination in basic visual tasks, as used in clinical optometry, and more complex ones, such as reading. The final objective is to explore the influence of aging and individual differences on hand-proximity effects. The influence of age is interesting because people of all ages are increasingly being confronted with interactive visual displays. Moreover, we previously showed that younger and older adults have different patterns of static hand-proximity effects. To explore the role of individual differences, we want to investigate the relationship between subjective judgments of mental effort and visual strain, and objective task performance, such as task speed and accuracy. This should be helpful in understanding how people come to prefer one type of device or interaction over another. We hope to help develop useful ergonomic recommendations for the computer workplace by studying how users experience and perform tasks when they manually interact with visual displays.