Division of Neuroergonomics
University of Iowa, Department of Neurology
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People Tracker
People often act differently in controlled laboratory and clinical settings than they do in real life. Consequently, the goals, rewards, dangers, benefits, and time frames of sampled behavior can differ markedly between the clinic and “the wild.” A laboratory test may seem artificial or frustrating, and may not be taken seriously, resulting in a misleadingly poor performance. On the other hand, subjects may be on their best behavior and perform optimally when they know they are being graded in a laboratory or clinic, yet they may behave ineffectively in real life and fail to meet their apparent performance potentials at work, home, school, or in a host of instrumental activities of daily living. Solutions to these pitfalls in the study of brain– behavior relationships can be derived through rigorous observations of people at work and play in naturalistic settings, drawing from principles already being applied in studies of animal behavior and making use of great advances in sensor technology for simultaneously recording the movements of individuals, their surroundings, and their internal body and brain states.