The Elephant in the Road: Auditory Perceptual Load Affects Driver Perception and Awareness

Summary Perceptual load theory research has shown that the level of perceptual load in a task affects processing of additional information. Less certain are the cross‐modal effects of perceptual load—does load in one modality affect processing in another? The current study assessed the effect of auditory perceptual load on visual attention in a driving simulator task. While driving, participants listened to traffic updates on the radio, which imposed either low or high perceptual load. Awareness for an unexpected animal as well as less novel objects (such as billboards and other vehicles) was markedly reduced under high load. Driver behaviour was also significantly affected, with impaired lateral control, longer reaction times to hazards and more collisions under high load. This study has important implications for load theory and also more general implications for road safety, as it suggests that auditory load may be an important, often overlooked factor in driver attention.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“This is. That was.” Examining a Family’s Lived Experiences After a Cancer Diagnosis

In 2015, 231,840 American women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. This figure represents mothers, wives, or sisters diagnosed with cancer, a diagnosis which has the potential to affect those closest to them, especially their immediate family. This research aimed to examine the lived experience of a family unit that lost their spouse/mother/sister-in-law to invasive breast cancer. A phenomenological case study was utilized to guide this research. One family unit, consisting of a spouse, daughter, son, and sister-in-law to the deceased were recruited from Southern Ontario, Canada. Background questionnaires and one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted. The following themes emerged: (1) negatives, describing struggles with balancing care, faith, and living after a death in the family and (2) silver linings, depicting the strength that Nancy, the deceased, maintained during her illness, and the family’s hope and optimism for the future. This paper only addresses the theme “Negatives,” while the last theme is addressed in Part II of this research. Within the theme “Negatives,” there were four sub-themes: (1) What About the Kids? (2) The Balancing Act, (3) Why Would He Do This? and (4) Life After Mom. Each will be discussed in turn. This research study provides valuable information regarding the lived experiences of families coping with a parental/spousal cancer diagnosis. It may assist other individuals in similar situations by providing comfort knowing that they are not the only ones encountering this journey. The participants’ voices may also allow others to develop strength by understanding the effect of cancer on a family.     

Global bias reliability in dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)

Dogs enrolled in a previous study were assessed two years later for reliability of their local/global preference in a discrimination test with the same hierarchical stimuli used in the previous study (Experiment 1) and with a novel stimulus (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, dogs easily re-learned to discriminate the positive stimulus; their individual global/local choices were stable compared to the previous study; and an overall clear global bias was found. In Experiment 2, dogs were slower in acquiring the initial discrimination task; the overall global bias disappeared; and, individually, dogs tended to make inverse choices compared to the original study. Spontaneous attention toward the test stimulus resembling the global features of the probe stimulus was the main factor affecting the likeliness of a global choice of our dogs, regardless of the type of experiment. However, attention to task-irrelevant elements increased at the expense of attention to the stimuli in the test phase of Experiment 2. Overall, the results suggest that the stability of global bias in dogs depends on the characteristics of the assessment contingencies, likely including the learning requirements of the tasks. Our results also clearly indicate that attention processes have a prominent role on dogs’ global bias, in agreement with previous findings in humans and other species.     

The Role of Teachers' Social-Emotional Competence in Their Beliefs About Peer Victimization

One hundred fifty preservice teachers and 25 in-service teachers were surveyed to examine whether mental representations of relationships, confidence about managing bullying, empathy toward victims, and emotional expressiveness were associated with their peer victimization-related beliefs. Teachers' confidence about managing bullying was positively associated with their prosocial peer beliefs. In addition, the belief that the distress that children experience as a result of being victimized should be dismissed was negatively related to teachers' positive representations. Teachers' reports of positive emotional expressiveness were negatively related to normative, assertive, avoidance, and dismissive victimization-related beliefs and positively related to prosocial peer beliefs. In contrast, teachers' reports of negative emotional expressiveness were negatively related to prosocial peer beliefs and avoidance victimization-related beliefs. In-service teachers reported slightly higher positive expressiveness than preservice teachers did. Minority teachers reported higher scores for positive expressiveness, empathy, and lower negative classroom expressiveness than nonminority teachers did. Implications of these findings for practice are discussed.     

Risk for separation anxiety disorder among girls: paternal absence, socioeconomic disadvantage, and genetic vulnerability

The authors examined genetic and environmental influences, including the contributions of 2 measured aspects of the shared environment of twins (paternal absence, socioeconomic disadvantage) on the development of mother-reported separation anxiety disorder (SAD) history in a sample of 1,887 female twin pairs. Four different symptom categories of SAD were considered. Results revealed that all 4 SAD symptom categories were significantly heritable, whereas the contribution of shared environmental influences to the variation in risk was significant for only 2 of the 4 SAD categories. Paternal absence was found to have an important influence in vulnerability for SAD, whereas the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage was less robust. Evidence for race differences in the etiology of SAD was not found.     

Adolescents React to the Events of September 11, 2001: Focused Versus Ambient Impact

This study examined the perceived impact of the events of September 11, 2001, on adolescents distant from the disaster sites and compared these perceptions with changes in everyday moods. A survey of reactions to September 11 was completed 2-5 months after the events by 171 adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of stress and health. Electronic diary ratings of contemporaneous moods before and after the attacks were also compared. Many adolescents distant from the disaster sites reported changes in everyday activities and signs of distress along with some positive outcomes. Elevated levels of negative affect emerged when adolescents were asked directly about the event (focused impact), but no changes were detected in their ongoing, momentary mood reports before and after September 11 (ambient impact). Trait and electronic diary measures of anxiety independently predicted posttraumatic distress. Refined assessments are needed to evaluate the degree to which self-reported traumatic symptoms reflect significant clinical distress versus an attentional focus generated by the question-asking process.     

A genetically informed study of the processes underlying the association between parental marital instability and offspring adjustment

Parental divorce is associated with problematic offspring adjustment, but the relation may be due to shared genetic or environmental factors. One way to test for these confounds is to study offspring of twins discordant for divorce. The current analyses used this design to separate the mechanisms responsible for the association between parental divorce, experienced either before or after the age of 16, and offspring well-being. The results were consistent with a causal role of divorce in earlier initiation of sexual intercourse and emotional difficulties, in addition to a greater probability of educational problems, depressed mood, and suicidal ideation. In contrast, the increased risk for cohabitation and earlier initiation of drug use was explained by selection factors, including genetic confounds. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).     

Peer influence on bulimic symptoms in college students

This longitudinal study examined the influence of peer selection and socialization on bulimic symptoms in college students. Ninety-eight participants completed measures of bulimic symptoms, self-esteem, perfectionism, and impulsivity in the spring and fall of 2003. Peer influence was assessed by examining similarity among selected peers, unselected peers, and nonpeers over time. Among selected peers, bulimic symptoms demonstrated patterns of socialization, self-esteem and perfectionism demonstrated patterns of selection, and these personality traits longitudinally predicted changes in bulimic symptoms. Unselected peers demonstrated no similarity for bulimia, self-esteem, or perfectionism, but they did evidence socialization for impulsivity. The findings support an etiological model that integrates social and individual risk factors in creating environments that influence disordered eating among college students.     

A preliminary evaluation of two behavioral skills training procedures for teaching abduction-prevention skills to schoolchildren

Although child abduction is a low-rate event, it presents a serious threat to the safety of children. The victims of child abduction face the threat of physical and emotional injury, sexual abuse, and death. Previous research has shown that behavioral skills training (BST) is effective in teaching children abduction-prevention skills, although not all children learn the skills. This study compared BST only to BST with an added in situ training component to teach abduction-prevention skills in a small-group format to schoolchildren. Results showed that both programs were effective in teaching abduction-prevention skills. In addition, the scores for the group that received in situ training were significantly higher than scores for the group that received BST alone at the 3-month follow-up assessment.     

Is who you are who you're talking to? Interpersonal style and complementarity in mixed-sex interactions

To investigate interpersonal theory, the authors examined the social behavior of 112 previously unacquainted male-female pairs collaborating on a joint task. Structural equation modeling analyses provided clear evidence of complementarity: In addition to trait affiliation and dominance both predicting situational behavior, each interaction partner's behavior influenced the other's in accordance with the theory, eliciting similar levels of affiliation and opposite levels of dominance. There were also clear biases related to participants' interpersonal traits: When behavior, as indexed by observers, was held constant, more trait affiliative participants tended to view themselves and their partner as warmer during the interaction; likewise, more trait dominant participants perceived themselves to act more dominantly than they actually did. Throughout, there were no sex differences.