What attracts attention during police pursuit driving?

Efficient deployment of attention is important to the safe execution of tasks with a high content of visual information, such as driving. Chasing a lead vehicle is an extremely demanding and dangerous task, though little is known of the visual skills required. A study is reported that recorded the eye movements of police drivers and two control groups (novices and age‐ and experienced‐ matched controls) while watching a series of video clips of driving. The clips included pursuits, emergency response drives, and control drives (at normal speeds) around Nottinghamshire, UK. Analysis of gaze durations within certain categories of stimuli revealed that daytime pursuit drives correspond with an increase in gaze durations on a lead car (controlled for exposure), though police drivers direct their attention to other sources of potential hazards, such as pedestrians, more so than other drivers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Replicability and 40-year predictive power of childhood ARC types

We examined 3 questions surrounding the undercontrolled, overcontrolled, and resilient-or Asendorpf-Robins-Caspi (ARC)-personality types originally identified by Block (1971). In analyses of the teacher personality assessments of over 2,000 children in 1st through 6th grade in 1959-1967 and follow-up data on general and cardiovascular health outcomes in over 1,100 adults recontacted 40 years later, we found bootstrapped internal replication clustering suggesting that Big Five scores were best characterized by a tripartite cluster structure corresponding to the ARC types. This cluster structure was fuzzy rather than discrete, indicating that ARC constructs are best represented as gradients of similarity to 3 prototype Big Five profiles; ARC types and degrees of ARC prototypicality showed associations with multiple health outcomes 40 years later. ARC constructs were more parsimonious but, depending on the outcome, comparable or slightly worse classifiers than the dimensional Big Five traits. Forty-year incident cases of heart disease could be correctly identified with 67% accuracy by childhood personality information alone and stroke incidence with over 70% accuracy. Findings support the theoretical validity of ARC constructs, their treatment as continua of prototypicality rather than discrete categories, and the need for further understanding the robust predictive power of childhood personality for midlife health.     

One to four, and nothing more: nonconscious parallel individuation of objects during action planning

Much of the current understanding about the capacity limits on the number of objects that can be simultaneously processed comes from studies of visual short-term memory, attention, and numerical cognition. Consistent reports suggest that, despite large variability in the perceptual tasks administered (e.g., object tracking, counting), a limit of three to four visual items can be independently processed in parallel. In the research reported here, we asked whether this limit also extends to the domain of action planning. Using a unique rapid visuomotor task and a novel analysis of reach trajectories, we demonstrated an upper limit to the number of targets that can be simultaneously encoded for action, a capacity limit that also turns out to be no more than three to four. Our findings suggest that conscious perceptual processing and nonconscious movement planning are constrained by a common underlying mechanism limited by the number of items that can be simultaneously represented.     

Emerging research on intergroup prosociality: Group members' charitable giving,positive contact,allyship, and solidarity with others

This paper describes an emerging body of work on intergroup prosociality, drawing together parallel literatures and highlighting some of the themes of the recent research. A broad distinction between benevolence and activism serves as the foundation to explore forms of intergroup prosociality, such as charitable giving, displays of empathy and affirmation (positive and supportive contact), allyship, and solidarity. Gaps and implications for future research are discussed. For example, we propose that it may be useful to distinguish allyship, defined as advocacy for others motivated by the values and norms of the ingroup for its own ends, from solidarity, defined as advocacy on behalf of others from the perspective of a shared, inclusive group. We propose that articulating the similarities between these various forms of intergroup prosociality, and testing the differences, will be a useful direction of future research.     

Size perception is less context-sensitive in males

Context sensitivity of size perception has previously been used to study individual differences related to the distinction between local, analytic, or field-independent and global, holistic, or field-dependent perceptual styles. For example, it has been used in several recent studies of autistic spectrum disorders, which may involve an excessive bias toward local processing. Autism is much more common in males, and there is evidence that this may be in part because males in general tend to be less context-sensitive than females, and thus are more affected by conditions that further reduce context sensitivity. There is also evidence that a bias to local processing is more common in professions that require attention to detail. Context sensitivity of size perception was therefore studied as a function of sex and academic discipline in sixty-four university staff and students by a simple, sensitive, and specific psychophysical measure based on the Ebbinghaus illusion. The results show that in this task males are on average less context-sensitive than females, that the overlap is large, and that subjects with very high or very low context sensitivity tend to have the sex and profession predicted by the above hypotheses.     

Racial differences in adolescent coping and self-esteem

Racial differences in coping strategies and self-esteem were examined for 361 male and female adolescents in Grades 7-12. Coping strategies were assessed with the Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experiences (J. M. Patterson & H. I. McCubbin, 1986). Self-esteem was assessed by the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (S. Coopersmith, 1987). Multivariate analysis revealed racial differences in adolescent coping strategies of ventilating feelings, seeking diversions, developing self-reliance, avoiding problems, seeking spiritual support, investing in close friends, engaging in demanding activities, solving family problems, and relaxing. In particular, African American adolescents reported using diversions, self-reliance, spiritual support, close friends, demanding activities, family problems, and relaxation more frequently than Caucasian adolescents did. Implications for professionals and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Applicant reactions to face-to-face and technology-mediated interviews: a field investigation

This field study examined applicant reactions (N = 802) toward face-to-face as compared with technology-mediated interviews (through videoconferencing or by telephone) for 346 organizations. Face-to-face interviews were perceived as more fair and led to higher job acceptance intentions than were videoconferencing and telephone interviews. Perceived interview outcomes were higher with face-to-face and telephone interviews over videoconferencing. Self-monitoring moderated the relationship between interview medium and perceptions of fairness. Specifically, this relationship was (a). positive for face-to-face, (b). negative for telephone, and (c). nonsignificant for videoconferencing interviews. Moreover, the number of offers an applicant received moderated the relationship between interview medium over, and perceived fairness. The relationship between number of offers and perceived fairness was positive for face-to-face and negative for technology-mediated interviews.