LARGE-SCALE REDUCTIONS IN SPEEDING AND ACCIDENTS IN CANADA AND ISRAEL: A BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

We assessed the effects of posted feedback and warning ticket programs on speeding and accidents in two cities. In Experiment 1, speeding feedback signs were effective even when 10 were used in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and reductions in speeding were associated with reductions in accidents. The effectiveness of the signs was correlated with the number of intersections and residences within 0.5 km beyond them, and the signs had no effect on untreated streets. In Experiment 2, posted feedback and a warning program reduced speeding and accidents on 14 streets in Haifa, Israel.     

Signal Detection Models with Random Participant and Item Effects

The theory of signal detection is convenient for measuring mnemonic ability in recognition memory paradigms. In these paradigms, randomly selected participants are asked to study randomly selected items. In practice, researchers aggregate data across items or participants or both. The signal detection model is nonlinear; consequently, analysis with aggregated data is not consistent. In fact, mnemonic ability is underestimated, even in the large-sample limit. We present two hierarchical Bayesian models that simultaneously account for participant and item variability. We show how these models provide for accurate estimation of participants’ mnemonic ability as well as the memorability of items. The model is benchmarked with a simulation study and applied to a novel data set. This research is supported by NSF grants SES-0095919 and SES-0351523, NIH grant R01-MH071418, a University of Missouri Research Leave grant and fellowships from the Spanish Ministry of Education and the University of Leuven, Belgium.     

Who is Afraid of Flexitime: Correlates of Personal Choice of a Flexitime Schedule

L'étude examina les facteurs influençant la volonté d'entrer dans un système d'horaires fiexibles. Les facteurs observés comprenaient des variables de travail c.a.d. la satisfaction au travail, le niveau de la profession et la centralité du travail, et des variables hors travail c.a.d. le temps de trajet, le stress du trajet et les activités de loisirs, et des variables de personnalité, c.a.d. le besoin de développement. Des questionnaires furent administrés à 125 employés examinant les propositions de leur entreprise d'adopter des horaires variables. Une analyse discriminante indiqua que le choix des horaires variables était d'abord liéà des besoins personnels de développement. Un rôle plus secondaire était joué par la perception des horaires variables comme moyens d'éviter, réduire ou compenser les aspects indésirables de la vie de travail ou hors travail d'un individu.
This study examined factors influencing die willingness to enter into a flexitime schedule. Factors surveyed included: Work variables such as work satisfaction, job level, and work centrality; non-work variables such as commuting time, commuting strain, and leisure activities; and personality variables such as need for growth. Questionnaires were administered to 125 employees contemplating a work-site proposal to move to a flexitime schedule. Discriminant analysis indicated that flexitime choice was primarily related to personal growth needs. A more secondary role was played by perceptions of flexitime as a means to avoid, reduce, or compensate for undesirable aspects of a person's working or non-working life.     

Parental Loss and Family Violence as Correlates of Suicide and Violence Risk

Seventy-nine psychiatric inpatients were administered a battery of psychometric instruments that obtained information about early parental loss, exposure to family violence, and behavioral problems in themselves and in their first-degree relatives. These variables were correlated with suicide and violence risk measures. Suicide risk significantly correlated with all family variables whereas violence risk correlated with behavioral problems both in oneself and in one's first-degree relatives. Moreover, suicidal and/or violent patients had experienced maternal loss significantly more frequently than the nonsuicidal/nonviolent patients. In the suicidal/violent group, age of patient at death of parents was significantly lower than in the nonsuicidal/nonviolent group. Finally, family violence was significantly correlated with behavioral problems in self and in first-degree relatives. Findings are interpreted according to the authors' theoretical model of aggression regulation.     

Asymmetry between encoding and retrieval processes: Evidence from divided attention and a calibration analysis

Two experiments provide further information on the effects of divided attention (DA) on encoding and retrieval processes. The first experiment examined the effects of decision and motor difficulty of a concurrent reaction time task. A calibration analysis was used in the second experiment to test the hypothesis that shifting attentional emphasis away from encoding to the secondary task reduces the level of processing the to-be-remembered items receive. Overall, the results confirm and extend the conclusions of Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Benjamin, and Anderson (1996) and Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Guez, and Dori (1998), by pointing to clear differences between encoding and retrieval processes: Encoding is affected by simultaneous task demands, especially those associated with "central" resources involved in conscious decision making, whereas retrieval is obligatory in that it is largely immune to the effects of simultaneous demands. The results of the calibration analysis suggest that one reason for the poorer memory performance as a result of DA at encoding is a qualitative shift to less deep, elaborative strategies.     

Attentional capture by irrelevant emotional distractor faces is contingent on implicit attentional settings

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique (singleton) emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target and attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces.     

Death and the “life review” in Halakhah

Coping with old age involves resolving the task of integrity versus despair, which demands a nondefensive confrontation with the inevitability of death. Halakhah (Jewish ethics) also considered this task critical in later years of life, spoke of death's inevitability, and attempted to discourage denial of death. The Jewish approach seems compatible with Butler's concept of life review as a reconciliation with death and a reintegration of one's identity that occurs throughout later years. While the Eriksonian goal is confronting old age with a certain capacity for wisdom, the rabbis maintained that such wisdom must culminate in the creative act of repentance.     

Concurrent task effects on memory encoding and retrieval: Further support for an asymmetry

Several studies have demonstrated that divided attention at encoding significantly reduces memory performance, whereas divided attention at retrieval affects memory performance only minimally. However, the possibility exists that retrieval processes have shown such resilience because the concurrent tasks used have often not been very demanding. To assess this possibility, we used independent manipulations of the concurrent task during either encoding or retrieval that included stimulus-response compatibility and participant- versus experimenter-controlled pace. In addition, we manipulated the distribution of practice that the participants received with the primary and the concurrent tasks. The results replicated and extended those recently reported by Rohrer and Pashler (2003), indicating that although memory performance is negatively affected by divided attention at retrieval, especially with noncompatible stimulus-response mapping in the concurrent task, this effect was much smaller than that at encoding, in line with the asymmetry notion. Furthermore, experimenter versus participant control of the concurrent task had no effect on memory retrieval. Finally, under conditions of equal practice with both the memory and the concurrent tasks, memory retrieval was affected only to a small degree. In contrast to encoding processes, the processes involved in retrieval accuracy appear, in many cases, to be less interrupted by divided attention, although this protection requires substantial resources.     

Teaching ethics in engineering and computer science: A panel discussion

At a conference, two engineering professors and a philosophy professor discussed the teaching of ethics in engineering and computer science. The panelists considered the integration of material on ethics into technical courses, the role of ethical theory in teaching applied ethics, the relationship between cases and codes of ethics, the enlisting of support of engineering faculty, the background needed to teach ethics, and the assessment of student outcomes. Several audience members contributed comments, particularly on teaching ethical theory and on student assessment. This panel discussion took place at a mini-conference, Practicing and Teaching Ethics in Engineering and Computing, held during the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, Washington, D.C., March 8–9, 1997. Biographical information on panelists: Charles Glagola is an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Florida. He is a registered professional engineer in the states of Florida and Alabama. Before coming to academia, he had extensive industry experience culminating with his owning and operating a construction and engineering firm in Pensacola, Florida. He currently teaches engineering ethics as part of a professional issues course in the Department of Civil Engineering, and a one-hour engineering ethics course that is offered to all engineering students through the College of Engineering. Moshe Kam is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University. He heads Drexel’s Data Fusion Laboratory which specializes in multisensor systems and robot navigation. His professional interests include detection and estimation, distributed decision making, forensic applications of image processing, and engineering ethics. Michael Loui is professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1990 to 1991, he served at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. His scholarly interests include computational complexity theory, theory of parallel and distributed computation, fault-tolerant software, and professional ethics. Caroline Whitbeck is a philosopher of science, technology and medicine and is the Elmer G. Beamer-Hubert H. Shneider Professor in Ethics at Case-Western Reserve University. She also directs the WWW Ethics Center for Engineering & Science— http://ethics.cwru.edu— under a grant from the National Science Foundation. The focus of her current work is practical ethics, especially ethics in scholarly and scientific research. Her book, Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research, will appear from Cambridge University Press in winter 1997–98.     

Perceived career barriers and coping among youth in Israel: Ethnic and gender differences

This study investigated gender and ethnic differences in the perception of different types of career barriers among young adults in relation to their views of themselves as individuals (Personal Career Barriers) and their views of their gender and ethnic group (Group Career Barriers). This study also explored gender and ethnic differences in the sense of efficacy in coping with career barriers. The participants were 406 university students: 156 Israeli-born Jews, 133 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 117 Arab-Israelis. The results indicated that their perceptions of the different types of career barriers and their sense of coping efficacy differ according to gender and ethnic group and that there are also joint effects of gender and ethnicity. The results showed that participants rated group barriers higher than personal career barriers. However, the discrepancies were different in each of the three ethnic groups. Perceived career barriers were negatively associated with the sense of coping efficacy and positively associated with non-productive coping strategies. The implications for future research and counseling for minority groups are discussed.