A framework of complementary behavior has been proposed which maintains that direct manipulation and speech interfaces have reciprocal strengths and weaknesses. This suggests that user interface performance and acceptance may increase by adopting a multimodal approach that combines speech and direct manipulation. This effort examined the hypothesis that the speed, accuracy, and acceptance of multimodal speech and direct manipulation interfaces will increase when the modalities match the perceptual structure of the input attributes. A software prototype that supported a typical biomedical data collection task was developed to test this hypothesis. A group of 20 clinical and veterinary pathologists evaluated the prototype in an experimental setting using repeated measures. The results of this experiment supported the hypothesis that the perceptual structure of an input task is an important consideration when designing a multimodal computer interface. Task completion time, the number of speech errors, and user acceptance improved when interface best matched the perceptual structure of the input attributes.

Behavioral research often requires the acquisition and processing of large volumes of data. Most cur-rent techniques for recording behavior constrain the amount and type of data that can be measured. We developed and tested a system that uses voice recognition technology to collect data on the social inter-actions and singing patterns of cowbirds (Molothrus ater) living outdoors in a semi-natural environment. We spoke observation data into a wireless microphone that transmitted the data to a computer in the lab-oratory. After collection, the data were automatically checked for errors and then were entered into a database. Overall, the system performed at extremely high levels of accuracy. Furthermore, owing to the removal of constraints on observers such as breaking visual contact with subjects and manual data entry into a database, we were able to increase the amount of data collected and to collect new measures of social interactions that have not been available to us in the past. We tested the system under the chal-lenging circumstances of field observation, and it performed above our expectations. In a laboratory set-ting, if transmission difficulties are removed, voice recognition could be even more accurate. We recom-mend voice recognition as a powerful new tool for the variety of research fields in which measuring behavior is involved. Observational research often requires the unobtrusive

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A framework of complementary behavior has been proposed which maintains that direct manipulation and speech interfaces have reciprocal strengths and weaknesses. This suggests that user interface performance and acceptance may increase by adopting a multimodal approach that combines speech and direct manipulation. This effort examined the hypothesis that the speed, accuracy, and acceptance of multimodal speech and direct manipulation interfaces will increase when the modalities match the perceptual structure of the input attributes. A software prototype which supported a typical biomedical data collection task was developed to test this hypothesis. A group of 20 clinical and veterinary pathologists evaluated the prototype in an experimental setting using repeated measures. The results of this experiment supported the hypothesis that the perceptual structure of an input task is an important consideration when designing a multimodal computer interface. Task completion time, the number of ...

A model of complimentary behavior has been suggested based on arguments that direct manipulation and speech recognition interfaces have complimentary strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, anecdotal arguments have been given that direct manipulation interfaces are best used for specifying simple actions when all references are visible and the number of references is limited, while speech recognition interfaces are better at specifying more complex actions when references are numerous and not visible. Based on these observations, an empirical study has been proposed to evaluate speech recognition as a complimentary input channel in multimodal direct manipulation/speech recognition environments. It is hypothesized that this complimentary behavior is only true under certain conditions related to reference attributes and the interface tasks. The particular focus of this proposal is to study the effects of reference visibility, reference number, and task integration to characterize the co...

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