Research associate

 1977 to 1981

Getting published: I entered graduate school in Cognitive Psychology at Cal State Long Beach. 

For the masters thesis you had to publish an 'empirical study in a peer-review journal'.  This meant I had to come up with an original theory and collect data to support it.  It also meant finding a 'killer topic'. I had no idea what I wanted to do but I didn’t have much time. 

While preparing a presentation for  learning seminar I came across a study showing how reading scores improve when children start making ‘inferences’ (Paris and Lindauer). It was cited as a big reason Japanese students were outperforming Americans.

At another seminar someone presented a study showing how inference-making can interfere with adult reading. We have a hard time distinguishing inferences (deep-structure) from assertions (surface-structure ) in memory.

Ironic. The same process that helps children read is a source of misunderstanding between adult.  It was an Intriguing theory and a 'killer topic'

After getting a thesis committee to approve, I began testing adult  comprehension. 

Sure enough I found people are susceptible to misleading inferences. They mistook inferences for direct assertions over two-thirds,of the time

After listening to short passage containing sentences like “The karate expert hit the cement block”, they swore they heard “The karate expert broke the cement block.”

Inferences lower adult comprehension. I thought I was on to something. Inferences are stored in a manner that is indistinguishable from information conveyed by the senses.

I found similar cases in courtroom testimony and deceptive advertising. I presented my findings at a conference of the Western Psychological Association where I managed to get my thesis published [link]. 

Someone approached me and said that my research would be useful in  another area: developing speech recognition systems for the computer. 

In 1981, after the Reagan Administration cut funding for this kind of research, I completed the master’s degree and I went to work in the computer industry. 

Computer industry

 1981

Outlook: What did I know about computers before going to work in the computer industry ..? Next to nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true. I did know a thing or two. I remember that, before graduate school ..I wanted nothing to do with computers. The ‘load-sheets’ and ‘punch-cards’ I saw other students carrying around with them did not appeal to me in the least. Nor could I see myself working in a ‘computer-room’ that resembled the inside of a space-ship ..like where HAL was located in the film ‘2001 Space Odyssey’. Furthermore, textbook and media images I saw of women working in computer industry looked like they came out of a 1950’s issue of Look magazine. However, graduate school changed all of that. Now I had a revised outlook:

1. Computer programs sure beat manual number-crunching.
2. The folks working on speech recognition systems for computers at UCI took an interest in my thesis.
3. I envisioned a day when people would share data on a computer located somewhere else, which meant I wouldn’t necessarily have to work inside a computer room.
4. I took two computer courses taught by the same instructor. He required us to do a systems analysis study of each business operation first, then submit it along with any programs we wrote. The programs had to fit the operation.
5. The instructor told us that this would lead to greater job mobility. You can often go to work for the client company simply because, like an auditor .. you get a real good look at their business operations.
6. He was right, each organization I studied for my programming assignments ..offered me a job (a gas station, a paint-supply store and an survey organization for the health-care industry).
7. It didn’t look like I’d be confined to a computer lab after all, which meant I could get a better look around .. hopefully see women who didn’t look like models from the ’fifties.