• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.63-71
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• 2015

In this research, we explore whether mere exposure to external cues with vertical progress (e.g., moving upward or moving downward) can influence individuals' persistence to complete focal tasks. Drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, we propose that, a moving-upward (vs. downward) cue activates the abstract concept of difficulty, which is associated with the physical experience of climbing uphill (vs. downhill). Due to this association between moving uphill and difficulty, merely exposing individuals to the moving-upward cue can induce greater feeling of difficulty and this greater difficulty, in turn, reduce individuals' persistence, compared to exposing individuals to the moving-downward cue. Across three studies, we find supporting evidence for the effect of the external cues with vertical progress on individuals' performance both in physical tasks and in a cognitive task.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.179-188
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• 2003

Purpose: This study was designed to create the job description of Korean transplantation nurse practitioner and examine performance frequencies, criticality, and difficulties of task elements. Method: The sample consisted of 63 nurses and coordinators who performed duties related to transplantation at medical center in Korea. A survey method was used, and the questionnaire included frequencies, criticality, and difficulties of task elements in job description by the DACUM method. Using SPSS WIN 10.0, descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution, means, and standard deviations were conducted to examine the subject's general characteristics, the frequencies, criticality, and difficulties of task performance. Result: The job description of transplantation nurse practitioners revealed 5 duties, 22 tasks, and 85 task elements. On the all five duties, the averages of the performance frequency, criticality, and difficulty were 2.41, 3.38, and 2.78, meaning that the respondents rarely perform the 5 duties, but consider them critical and easy to perform. Conclusion: The job description of the transplantation nurse practitioner included duty, task, and task element and definition of job completed. Thus we recommended a data based trial to confirm and validate the information gathered.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.123-130
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• 2010

Electroencephalogram(EEG) would be the most objective psychophysiological research technique on human errors though few research has been taken yet. This study aimed to get characteristics of human error while committing simple Odd-Ball tasks by utilizing the power spectrum technique of EEG data. Each experiment was composed of 3 tasks with different rules, and 8 young undergraduate students participated in this study as paid subjects. The result showed in the affirmative that subject and the interaction of subject and task factors were statistically significant on variation of $\alpha$ band power $P_{\alpha/(\alpha+\beta+\theta)}$ and $\beta$ band power $P_{\beta/(\alpha+\beta+\theta)}$, and that the former increasing in backward direction to Pz reflects compatibility whereas the latter increasing in forward direction to Fz reflects familiarity. Therefore it was coucluded that, since task 2 carried out in the present research requiring decoding process would be more difficult to human beings than the task merely requiring psychological recall process, task 1 and task 3 were classified into a homogenious group excluding task 2, and the ratio $\alpha$ band power to $\beta$ band power indicated enormous increase of $\alpha$ band power relative to $\beta$ band power in the cases of contra-lateral errors, especially in task 2.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.168.2-168
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• 2001

Generally, operators suffer much difficulty in manipulating micro-nano-sized objects without assisting of human interface, due to the scaling effects in micro/nano world. Thus, the micromanipulation system based on the teleoperation techniques enables operators to manipulate the micro objects easily by transferring both human motion and manipulation skills to the micromanipulator. In teleoperated microassembly, it is necessary to provide a useful user interface for facilitating micro assembly task executed by human operators. In this paper, Intelligent User Interface (UI) for teleoperated microassembly is proposed. The proposed intelligent UI improves task performance by teleoperated micromanipulation as well as guides operators to succeed in desirable ...

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.61-68
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• 2018

Phonological awareness, or consciousness of speech sounds and operational skill with them, develops in the order word > syllable > phoneme, over the ages of four to seven. Among the various types of phonological awareness tasks, the deletion task has a higher level of difficulty because it requires operation and deletion of sounds within words. This task also has a high correlation with reading proficiency. This study utilized a deletion task with 20 questions to see how operational development depended on age and gender. The deletion task, with 20 questions, was tested on four- to six-year old children developing normally (N = 90). The results showed that phonological awareness performance improved with age. This age effect was not accompanied by a gender effect; age and gender interacted. The study confirmed the development of phonological awareness in four- to six-year-old children who were developing normally. The deletion task can be used to effectively detect the risk of difficulties with phonological awareness in preschoolers with speech, language, and reading problems.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.194-204
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• 2012

Measuring task complexity of movement skill is an important factor to evaluate a difficulty of learning and/or imitating a task for autonomous robots. Although many complexity-measures are proposed in research areas such as neuroscience, physics, computer science, and biology, there have been little attention on the robotic tasks. To cope with measuring complexity of robotic task, we propose an information-theoretic measure for task complexity of movement skills. By modeling proprioceptive as well as exteroceptive sensor data as multivariate Gaussian distribution, movements of a task can be modeled as probabilistic model. Additionally, complexity of temporal variations is modeled by sampling in time and modeling as individual random variables. To evaluate our proposed complexity measure, several experiments are performed on the real robotic movement tasks.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.107-113
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• 2013

Problem solving and/or decision making process usually encountered in human living consists of a sequence of human behaviors based upon his/her knowledge. Thus, Rasmussen introduced Skill-Rule-Knowledge paradigm to countermeasure human errors that can occur in Nuclear Power Plants. Unfortunately however, it was not so easy as expected since objective evidence have not been obtainable with conventional research techniques. With the help of EEG band pawer ratio techniques, this study tried to get psycho-physiological symptoms of human errors, if any, while human beings perform knowledge-based behaviors such as simple arithmetic computations with different difficulty level. A set of simulated works was carried out with a computer station. Four kinds of arithmetic computation tasks were given to 10 health male under-graduate students on different day individually, and during the experiment, EEG and ECG was measured continuously for objective psycho-physiological analysis. According to the results, ${\alpha}$/(${\alpha}+{\beta}$) as well as ${\alpha}/{\beta}$ band power ratio were sensitive to task difficulty level which consistently decreased both. However, any one of them failed to reveal the influence of tasks with different difficulty level in the aspect of task duration time. On the contrary, Heart Rate Variability was more suggestive than expected. To make a conclusion, it can be said that band power of EEG waves will be helpful in not only assessment of work difficulty level but also assessment of workers' skill development if supported by cardiac function such as HRV.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.855-868
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• 2004

There are several types of singularities in controlling robotic manipulators: kinematic singularity, algorithmic singularity, semi-kinematic singularity, semi-algorithmic singularity, and representation singularity. The kinematic and algorithmic singularities have been investigated intensively because they are not predictable or difficult to avoid. The problem with these singularities is an unnecessary performance reduction in non-singular region and the difficulty in performance tuning. Tn this paper, we propose a method of avoiding kinematic and algorithmic singularities by applying a task reconstruction approach while maximizing the task performance by calculating singularity measures. The proposed method is implemented by removing the component approaching the singularity calculated by using singularity measure in real time. The outstanding feature of the proposed task reconstruction method (TR-method) is that it is based on a local task reconstruction as opposed to the local joint reconstruction of many other approaches. And, this method has dynamic task priority assignment feature which ensures the system stability under singular regions owing to the change of task priority. The TR-method enables us to increase the task controller gain to improve the task performance whereas this increase can destabilize the system for the conventional algorithms in real experiments. In addition, the physical meaning of tuning parameters is very straightforward. Hence, we can maximize task performance even near the singular region while simultaneously obtaining the singularity-free motion. The advantage of the proposed method is experimentally tested by using the 7-dof spatial manipulator, and the result shows that the new method improves the performance several times over the existing algorithms.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.267-274
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to identify a relationship between the time taken and the characteristics of touch key for touch-screen-based in-vehicle information system (IVIS) and to suggest a new Fitts' law formula that is added a driving speed parameter. Many studies already have shown that Fitts' law is well fitted in various devices for primary tasks, but there is no study of Fitts' law for secondary task in dual-task situation. Fitts' law may not be applied to the secondary task as it is, because the secondary task performance can be affected by the amount of attention for the primary task. To verify this, we carried out an experiment that showed whether pointing task to touch-screen-based IVIS during driving is affected by driving speeds or not. In the experiment, 30 people were volunteered for participants and the participants carried out driving task and pointing task on the screen of IVIS simultaneously. We measured the time to point a touch key on IVIS for every condition (3 driving speeds${\times}5$ touch key sizes${\times}7$ distances between steering wheel and touch key). As a result, there was an effect of driving speed on the pointing time. As we extended the index of difficulty of the conventional Fitts' law formula by incorporating driving speed, we established an extended Fitts' law formula for pointing on IVIS, which showed better accordance with dual task situation. This study can be evidence that secondary task performance is affected by degree of concentration on primary task, and the extended Fitts' law formula can be useful to design interfaces of IVIS.

• Asian Oncology Nursing
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.3-14
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• 2006

Purpose: This study was designed to develop job description for Korean oncology APNs and assess importance, frequency, and difficulty for each of task elements listed on the job description. Method: Twenty-four oncology APNs or professors working at cancer centers or universities in Korea were enrolled in this study. They were asked to complete the questionnaires about frequencies, importances, and difficulties on the task elements for the APNs which had developed through a DACUM method. Descriptive statistics were produced by using SPSS WIN 10.0. Result: The job description of oncology APNs was identified 5 duties, 44 tasks, and 110 task elements. As for the all five duties, the average scores of the frequency, importance, and difficulty were 2.57, 2.25 and 2.52. And the role of educator was shown as the most important duty of the oncology ANPs, whereas the role of administer was the least. And the role of consultant was the most frequently performed by the oncology APNs. Conclusion: In this study, we could recognize the reality of oncology APNs' performances having wide spectrum from medical to nursing disciplines. For further verifying and improving performance, we need more precisely designed studies with more representative subjects.