The fast and the female: Gender differences in wellbeing and wage consequences of commute impedance

At equal distance, the impedance created by traffic congestion strongly affects the duration of commute. Extant literature indicates that commute impedance negatively affects wellbeing, distinctly from the distance and the duration of commute. These negative effects are reported to be larger for women. Consequently, workers, especially females, must be willing to accept lower wages if reaching the job location entails fewer traffic congestions and accommodates a speedier commute. Using the Canadian General Social Survey of 2015 and the Census of 2016, the present paper assesses the wellbeing and wage consequences of commute impedance on men and women who drive to work. The study first demonstrates that the negative impact of commute impedance on wellbeing is greater for women. Second, consistent with the greater negative effect of traffic congestion on their wellbeing, women appear to pay a price off their wages, in order to avoid commute impedance. The policy implications are discussed.     

Speed analyses of stimulus equivalence.

The functional substitutability of stimuli in equivalence classes was examined through analyses of the speed of college students'' accurate responding. After training subjects to respond to 18 conditional relations, subjects'' accuracy and speed of accurate responding were compared across trial types (baseline, symmetry, transitivity, and combined transitivity and symmetry) and nodal distance (one- through five-node transitive and combined transitive and symmetric relations). Differences in accuracy across nodal distance and trial type were significant only on the first tests of equivalence, whereas differences in speed were significant even after extended testing. Response speed was inversely related to the number of nodes on which the tested relations were based. Significant differences in response speed were also found across trial types, except between transitivity and combined trials. To determine the generality of these comparisons, three groups of subjects were included: An instructed group was given an instruction that specified the interchangeability of stimuli related through training; a queried group was queried about the basis for test-trial responding: and a standard group was neither instructed nor queried. There were no significant differences among groups. These results suggest the use of response speed and response accuracy to measure the strength of matching relations.     

Combining speed and accuracy to assess error-free cognitive processes

Both the speed and accuracy of responding are important measures of performance. A well-known interpretive difficulty is that participants may differ in their strategy, trading speed for accuracy, with no change in underlying competence. Another difficulty arises when participants respond slowly and inaccurately (rather than quickly but inaccurately), e.g., due to a lapse of attention. We introduce an approach that combines response time and accuracy information and addresses both situations. The modeling framework assumes two latent competing processes. The first, the error-free process, always produces correct responses. The second, the guessing process, results in all observed errors and some of the correct responses (but does so via non-specific processes, e.g., guessing in compliance with instructions to respond on each trial). Inferential summaries of the speed of the error-free process provide a principled assessment of cognitive performance reducing the influences of both fast and slow guesses. Likelihood analysis is discussed for the basic model and extensions. The approach is applied to a data set on response times in a working memory test. The authors wish to thank Roger Ratcliff, Christopher Chabris, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments, and Aureliu Lavric for providing the data analyzed in this paper.     

The developmental course of processing speed in children with and without learning disabilities

This study contrasted the development of processing speed in children with and without learning disabilities. We examined whether the same global mechanism presumed to be responsible for the normal developmental improvement in processing speed might also be associated with the processing speed deficiencies observed in children with learning impairments. One hundred and twenty-two children with learning disabilities in reading and/or math and 206 non-disabled community controls participated. There were no differences in relation of age to the development of processing speed for children with and without learning disabilities. We interpreted these results as suggesting that the underlying etiologies for the normal developmental change in processing speed and for the relative deficiencies in processing speed seen among children with learning disabilities were different.     

认知作业年老化的比较研究

用言语—操作和人机对话两种方式完成１２项认知作业年老化比较研究,被试２４２人,４６－７５岁。结果表明：（１）一些作业（符号数字、视觉数字广度、听觉数字广度、词对联想学习、图象自由回忆和无意图形再认）成绩随年老明显下降,另一些作业（图象分类、卡片分类、心算和矩阵填图）成绩不随年老明显降低;（２）再次验证心算、符号数字、数字鉴别和计数四项非词语性作业速度随年老进行性减慢。     

Constituents of response rates

Response rate and the proportion of time pigeons allocated to a key-pecking activity were measured on several basic types of reinforcement schedules. Reinforcement frequency was varied within each type of basic schedule, and the effects on two constituents of response rate were noted. Propensity, the proportion of time the birds spent on a platform in front of the key, showed very consistent effects as reinforcement frequency varied: in general, it decreased when reinforcement frequency markedly decreased and it increased when reinforcement frequency increased. Speed, key pecks per unit of time spent on the platform, showed inconsistent effects when reinforcement frequency varied. Consequently, response rate showed less consistent effects than did propensity. Cumulative response records demonstrated the existence of several different types of transitions or boundary states between the key-pecking activity and other activities. The types of transitions that occurred between activities depended on both the type of reinforcement schedule and the frequency of reinforcement. The propensity data support the position that general laws of behavior can be based on temporal measures of behavior. The speed data suggest that, if a complete assessment of the dynamic properties of behavior is to be achieved, measures of behavior must incorporate the structural variations in the operant unit.     

发音人和语境变异与声调知觉

本文用Garner快速分类法研究了发音人规范化和语境补偿过程与声调知觉的关系。得到的主要结果是:(1)发音人变化对声调识别产生了显著的Gar-ner干扰;声调变化对男女声判别产生了同样的十扰。(2)语境变化对声调识别也产生了显著的Garner干扰。按照Garner方法的假设,这说明发音人规范化和语境变异补偿与声调识别之问是相互联系和相互影响的。(3)虽然发音人和语境同时变化引起的声调识别反应时延长约等于它们单独变化时反应时延长量之和,但正确率下降远大于单独变化时下降量之和。说明发音人和语境变异对声调识别的干扰不是独立的,它们之间存在相互作用。这种作用增加了声调识别的难度。     

驾驶员的动态反应时研究

本研究应用DFY-1型动态反应时测试仪,以解放CA10B 型卡车为实验用车,结合日常运输任务,对三种年龄组(20—29岁、30—39岁、40—49岁)的30名驾驶员,在三种车速(静态,30公里/小时及50公里/小时)条件下的反应时、动作时及制动反应时进行了测试。结果表明:车速对驾驶员的反应时及制动反应时有显著影响,而对动作时则无显著影响;驾驶员的年龄对反应时、动作时及制动反应时均无显著影响.本研究结果为加强驾驶员的安全教育与管理,控制车速提供了佐证。更高车速条件下驾驶员的反应时特点尚待进一步研究。     

In search of a measure to investigate mental performance among children: Development of the mental speed test

Processing speed is a component of general intelligence and an indicator of learning potential. There is a need for robust measures of mental speed based on contemporary theoretical developments. The current study addressed this need by proposing a mental speed test for children aged 60 to 96 months (5 to 8 years) and examining its psychometric properties. The test included indicators of perceptual speed, memory speed, reasoning speed, and fluency-flexibility speed presented through nonverbal items administered individually using touchscreen tablets. After establishing gender non-bias and concurrent validity with a contemporary intelligence test (i.e., ASIS, r = .59) with 107 children, the next administration included 373 children. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with subtest scores revealed a single-factor structure accounting for 45% of the total variance. Additional data from 212 children were used to assess structural validity and gender bias, which showed acceptable goodness of fit, providing evidence of the validity and reliability of the new measure for further use.