Joseph DW Stephens, Ph.D. - US grants

Computer security significantly depends on user behaviors, including choices about whether and when to apply software updates. Many security problems, including high-profile data breaches, are caused by failure to update vulnerable software, even after security issues are known and patches are available. In order to make computing more secure, there is a need to better understand the decision-making processes of users regarding their choices to apply, delay, or ignore security-related software updates. For example, how are decisions about software updates affected by other tasks the user is currently performing? How is the decision-making process different for users who are older adults versus users who are young adults? This project seeks to answer these questions with experiments that place young and older adult users in a variety of security-related software updating situations to test specific theories of how task-related factors and cognitive aging influence behavior. The research team includes computer scientists and cognitive psychologists, and will innovatively combine knowledge from these two areas. The project serves the national interest both by advancing scientific knowledge of decision making processes, and how that knowledge may be applied to promote public welfare through increased computing security.

The project uses multiple, complementary methods to increase understanding of cybersecurity behaviors of non-expert users in personal computing environments, including: systematic evaluation of the security update ecosystem to identify factors that may affect cybersecurity behaviors; surveying non-expert users to measure attitudes and expected behaviors in response to various software update scenarios; development and field testing of specific software update scenarios in personal computing environments; and development and testing of behavioral nudge interventions hypothesized to increase compliance with security-related software updating. These methods are employed to test the efficacy of protection motivation theory, cognitive load theory, and locus of control theory in the cybersecurity domain, and the results will contribute to the development of efficacious security-related software update strategies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

In recent years, automated speech recognition systems have become much more accurate and widely used. However, these systems still cannot handle speech variability as well as human listeners can. Furthermore, speech technology tends to work less effectively for underrepresented groups. This project will address these problems by investigating how human listeners understand variable speech, and by increasing the capacity and involvement of underrepresented groups in the field of speech science. The research will make prominent contributions to scientific knowledge of how human speech perception works. These contributions will be directly relevant to improving automatic speech recognition systems, which are becoming ubiquitous in technology, healthcare, and education. The project will also significantly strengthen research capacity in speech science at North Carolina A&T State University, which is the Nation’s largest Historically Black University, and will support increased training and involvement of students from underrepresented groups at both NC A&T and at Penn State University, the collaborating institution. The research and training outcomes of the project will help to make speech science and technology both more effective and more equitable.

A critical yet unsolved question in speech science is how human listeners achieve robust speech perception despite a highly variable speech signal. Theories of speech perception disagree on basic assumptions: for example, some theories suggest that speech perception depends mainly on recognizing acoustic patterns, while other theories suggest that listeners perceive the vocal tract movements that cause the speech sounds. This project will test and improve these competing theories by investigating the phenomenon of compensation for coarticulation (CfC), which is the finding that listeners’ perception of speech segments is affected by the properties of surrounding speech. Several experiments will be used to examine how CfC works in conditions of speech variability (e.g., talker variability, rate variability, and competing speech), and how CfC is affected by learning. In addition, the project will build capacity at NC A&T along three dimensions by (a) providing research training for students in speech science, (b) fostering collaborations between researchers at A&T and Penn State, and (c) enhancing opportunities for faculty development.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.