Stability and skill in driving

Two experiments addressed the relation between postural stability, perceptual sensitivity, and stability of driving performance. A vehicle was fitted with differential GPS for measuring position and speed, position sensors for measuring brake and accelerator depression, force transducers for measuring door, console and footrest bracing forces, and an accelerometer for measuring the 3D accelerations of the vehicle. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether the initiation of deceleration and the control of braking might be due to sensitivity to the perceptual variable tau, which specifies time-to-contact (TTC), and in particular, whether its first derivative, tau-dot, is used to maintain a constant deceleration profile. Using both untrained experienced drivers (EDs) and trained driving instructors from the Holden Performance Driving Centre (HPDC), results confirmed that, regardless of skill level, tau-dot was maintained at a value close to 0.5 and, as predicted by Lee [Perception 5 (1976) 437], braking was initiated when TTC approximately 5 s. In Experiment 2, we wished to quantify the purported differences in driving behaviour between EDs and HPDC instructors during a variety of everyday manoeuvres. Results indicated that instructors utilised a different cornering trajectory, a different emergency braking strategy, and were able to perform a high-speed swerve and recovery task more effectively than the EDs. In general, the instructors applied greater bracing forces using the door and console compared with EDs. The instructors also applied greater footrest forces during emergency braking than did the EDs. The greater use of bracing by instructor drivers to resist g-forces represents a strategy of active stabilisation that enhances both postural stability, as well as overall stability and consistency of driving performance. Results are discussed with regard to the dynamics of perceptual-motor coordination, and how increased stability might improve sensitivity to relevant perceptual information. We conclude that driver-training programmes that focus on increasing driver stability (as a pre-requisite for increased control) show great promise as a means to improving one's attention during driving, and hence have the potential to dramatically improve road safety in general.     

The Role of the Family in Childhood Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

While obsessive–compulsive disorder is widely recognized to have a strong genetic component, psychosocial factors are also acknowledged to be important. The primary focus of this paper is on familial factors associated with OCD in children and adolescents. It explores the family context as a possible risk factor in the development and maintenance of the disorder, including parental modeling, expressed emotion, parenting style, and family accommodation of the child's symptoms. The involvement of the family in the treatment of the disorder is also reviewed. Finally, future directions for research investigating familial factors in childhood OCD are presented.     

The Effect of Competitive Outcome and Task-Involving,Ego-Involving,and Cooperative Structures on the Psychological Well-Being of Individuals Engaged in a Co-Ordination Task: A Self-Determination Approach

Differing task and motivational characteristics of the competitive setting (viz., task-involving/ego-involving climates, cooperative/individual, and win/loss competitive outcome) were explored in relation to need satisfaction and subjective well-being (SWB). Participants, one-on-one or in pairs, were required to participate in a physical co-ordination task. Results revealed participants exposed to a task-involving condition and those who worked in cooperation to report higher levels of need satisfaction and SWB. Conversely, individuals exposed to ego-involving conditions and those who competed individually experienced higher levels of negative affect. Winning resulted in higher levels of need satisfaction and SWB, whereas losing led to higher levels of negative affect. Losing individually in an ego-involving condition led to the highest levels of negative affect responses and attenuated levels of reported need satisfaction and SWB. Via structural equation modeling, a model of motivational processes grounded in self-determination theory was supported in which elements of the competitive situation that facilitated need satisfaction led to increments in reported indices of SWB.     

Functional fixedness in a technologically sparse culture

Problem solving can be inefficient when the solution requires subjects to generate an atypical function for an object and the object's typical function has been primed. Subjects become "fixed" on the design function of the object, and problem solving suffers relative to control conditions in which the object's function is not demonstrated. In the current study, such functional fixedness was demonstrated in a sample of adolescents (mean age of 16 years) among the Shuar of Ecuadorian Amazonia, whose technologically sparse culture provides limited access to large numbers of artifacts with highly specialized functions. This result suggests that design function may universally be the core property of artifact concepts in human semantic memory.     

Implicit self-attitudes predict spontaneous affect in daily life

In 2 studies, the authors examined the degree to which implicit self-attitudes predicted people's spontaneous affective experiences in daily life. Across both studies, implicit attitudes toward the self (as measured by Implicit Association Tests) strongly predicted negative feeling states (as measured by computerized experience-sampling procedures), suggesting that implicit self-attitudes may be linked to changes in undifferentiated negative affect. Explicit attitudes toward the self generally did not account for these relations. Findings extend understanding of the factors that contribute to experienced affect and are the first to empirically link implicit self-attitudes with phenomenological affective experience in real-life settings over time.     

Interoceptive sensitivity and self-reports of emotional experience

People differ in the extent to which they emphasize feelings of activation or deactivation in their verbal reports of experienced emotion, termed arousal focus (AF). Two multimethod studies indicate that AF is linked to heightened interoceptive sensitivity (as measured by performance on a heartbeat detection task). People who were more sensitive to their heartbeats emphasized feelings of activation and deactivation when reporting their experiences of emotion over time more than did those who were less sensitive. This relationship was not accounted for by several other variables, including simple language effects. Implications for the role of interoception in experienced emotion and the validity of self-reported emotion are discussed.     

Endogenous shifts of covert attention operate within multiple coordinate frames: evidence from a feature-priming task

The locations of visual objects and events in the world are represented in a number of different coordinate frameworks. For example, a visual transient is known to attract (exogenous) attention and facilitate performance within an egocentric framework. However, when attention is allocated voluntarily to a particular visual feature (ie endogenous attention), the location of that feature appears to be variously encoded either within an allocentric framework or in a spatially invariant manner. In three experiments we investigated the importance of location for the allocation of endogenous attention and whether egocentric and/or allocentric spatial frameworks are involved. Primes and targets were presented in four conditions designed to vary systematically their spatial relationships in egocentric and allocentric coordinates. A reliable effect of egocentric priming was found in all three experiments, which suggests that endogenous shifts of attention towards targets defined by a particular feature operate in an egocentric representation of visual space. In addition, allocentric priming was also found for targets primed by their colour or shape. This suggests that attending to targets primed by nonspatial attributes results in facilitation that is localised in more than one coordinate frame of spatial reference.     

Stereotype development in Andalusian children

Social psychologists have shown a profound interest in intergroup relationships, but there are very few papers focusing on the developmental aspects that explain the psychological mechanisms involved in the construction of group and cultural identity. Our research aims to explore how the self-categorization of Andalusian children evolves. We tried to assess the degree to which they self-identify as Andalusian, Spanish, and European, and how this identification changes with age. We were also interested in the affective evaluation of different groups (French, Italian, English, German, Spanish, Catalonian, and Andalusian) made by Andalusian children. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationship between self-categorization and the evaluation of these groups. Results show that the development of national (autonomous community) identity in these children is influenced by their cognitive development, as well as by the relationships among the regional communities of Spain and the relationships between Spain and other countries. The peculiarity of Andalusians as a group is that they assume both identities: Spanish and Andalusian, from a very early age. In-group favoritism is an extended phenomenon at all ages, and Andalusian children have a negative stereotype of the other Spanish groups and other European communities.     

The ‘Medical Body’ As Philosophy's Arena

Medicine, as Byron Good argues, reconstitutes thehuman body of our daily experience as a medical body,unfamiliar outside medicine. This reconstitution can be seen intwo ways: (i) as a salutary reminder of the extent to which thereality even of the human body is constructed; and (ii) as anarena for what Stephen Toulmin distinguishes as theintersection of natural science and history, in which many ofphilosophy's traditional (and traditionally abstract) questionsare given concrete and urgent form.This paper begins by examining a number of dualities between themedical body and the body familiar in daily experience. Toulmin's epistemological analysis of clinical medicine ascombining both universal and existential knowledge is thenconsidered. Their expression, in terms of attention,respectively, to natural science and to personal history, isexplored through the epistemological contrasts between themedical body and the familiar body, noting the traditionalphilosophical questions which they in turn illustrate.     

The Reduction of Adverse Impact in an Employment Setting Using a Short-Term Memory Test

Research suggests that less adverse impact should result from the use of employment tests assessing memory abilities than is obtained from tests assessing cognitive abilities. To test the application of this principle, a Short-Term Memory test and a Reading Comprehension test were administered as part of a selection battery for entry level police. Subjects were 1423 police officer applicants for a Midwestern city in the U.S. The results for the overall sample showed a smaller standardized difference between the scores of Blacks and Whites on the Short-Term Memory test than on the Reading Comprehension test, a difference which was further reduced when a subsample of Blacks and Whites was created which had been matched on gender, years of education and age.