William B. Whitten II earned his Ph.D. in experimental/cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan's Human Performance Center. He has contributed broadly to human memory studies in cognitive psychology, to program management for basic psychology research in government, to human-machine interaction design in industry, and to the application of basic psychological science to the improvement of education. Dr. Whitten served on the faculties of the University of Michigan and the State University of New York at Albany, where he published basic research on human memory. He next served as the Assistant Director of Personnel and Training Research Programs at the Office of Naval Research, where he managed a nationwide, 30-location, basic research program on cognitive processes, human information processing, and computer-aided instruction. Following this, Dr. Whitten performed and managed research and development in the communications industry. During his career at Bell Laboratories and subsequently at AT&T Labs, Dr. Whitten led user-centered systems engineering and human factors design groups, including the User Experience Engineering Division and the Multimedia Applications and User Interfaces Division. At AT&T Labs, he was appointed as the first Technology Leader of User Experience Engineering. At Fordham University, Dr. Whitten was appointed as the first Distinguished Research Scholar in the Graduate School of Education, established the Center for Learning in Unsupervised Environments, and performed the research reported in this book. Dr. Whitten is a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society and of the Association for Psychological Science.
