Although increases in the use of automation have occurred across society, research has found that human operators often underutilize (disuse) and overly rely on (misuse) automated aids (R. Parasuraman & V. Riley, 1997). Nearly 275 Cameron University students participated in 1 of 3 experiments performed to examine the effects of perceived utility (M. T. Dzindolet, H. P. Beck, L. G. Pierce, & L. A. Dawe, 2001) on automation use in a visual detection task and to compare reliance on automated aids with reliance on humans. Results revealed a bias for human operators to rely on themselves. Although self-report data indicate a bias toward automated aids over human aids, performance data revealed that participants were more likely to disuse automated aids than to disuse human aids. This discrepancy was accounted for by assuming human operators have a "perfect automation" schema. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design of future automateddecision aids and training procedures for operators relying on such aids.

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Rauscher et al. reported [1] that brief exposure to a Mozart piano sonata produces a temporary increase in spatial reasoning scores, amounting to the equivalent of 8-9 IQ points on the Stanford-Binet IQ scale [2]. Early attempts to confirm this 'Mozart effect' were unsuccessful [3, 4, 5, 6]. Rauscher et al. subsequently restricted their account to an improvement in spatialtemporal reasoning, as measured by the Paper Folding and Cutting task [7]. We use procedures modelled on the original report to show that there is little evidence for a direct effect of music exposure on reasoning ability.

No abstract

Research on rhythmic structure is somewhat fragmented, due in part to differential use of terminology and a lack of research on the timing of harmonic accents. In this study, a harmonic and a temporal accent were pitted against each other in such a way as to form different rhythm patterns. In addition, two harmonic conditions that varied in the frequency of chord presentations (i.e., the composite rhythm) but not in the frequency of chord changes (i.e., the harmonic rhythm) were presented. Musicians and nonmusicians were requested to report perceived rhythm patterns in an attempt to determine the relative salience of the harmonic and temporal accents. In addition, a behavioral measure of the perceived meter was taken. Results indicated that the location of chord changes was the main determinant of subjects' rhythmic perceptions and the perceived onset of a measure. Furthermore, although subjects primarily inferred different meters based on the composite rhythm, an interaction of metrical and rhythmic choices was found, indicating that perception of rhythm patterns and inference of metrical structure may not always be independent.