Evaluation of an integrated lighting-warning system on motorists’ yielding at unsignalized crosswalks during nighttime

Drivers’ yielding behavior to pedestrians during nighttime was assessed in seven different conditions of crosswalk lighting: (a) baseline condition with standard road lighting; (b) enhanced LED lighting that increased lighting level from 70 to 120 lx; (c) flashing orange beacons on top of the backlit pedestrian crossing sign; (d) in-curb LED strips on the curbsides of the zebra crossing with steady light emission; (e) in-curb LED strips with flashing light emission; (d) all previous devices activated with in-curb LED strips in steady mode; (e) all previous devices activated with in-curb LED strips in flashing mode. For every condition 100 trials were recorded with a staged pedestrian that initiated a standardized crossing when a vehicle was approaching. The frequency of drivers’ yielding was computed for each condition. A significant increase for yielding compliance was recorded from standard road lighting to enhanced dedicated lighting (19–38.21%), and from enhanced dedicated lighting to the seventh condition with the flashing beacons and the flashing in-curb LED strips activated (38.21–63.56%). The results showed that the integrated lighting-warning system for pedestrian crossings was effective in increasing motorists’ yielding to pedestrians during nighttime.     

Daily relations between social perceptions and physical activity among college women

ObjectivesThere is a need to develop more effective physical activity (PA) promotion programs for college women. Theory and evidence suggest that perceptions of the social environment play a role in college women’s PA, though little is known about how these perceptions are associated with PA at the day level. The goal of this study was to examine relations between changes in college women’s daily social perceptions and objectively assessed PA over seven days.DesignDaily diary method.MethodCollege women (n = 80, M_Age = 20, M_BMI = 23.1 kg/m²) wore Fitbit wristbands and completed daily self-reports of (1) the quantity and perceived intensity of their social interactions (positive/negative), and (2) the occurrence of social comparisons (based on appearance/health/status) for seven days.ResultsMultilevel models showed daily variability in predictors and outcomes (ps < 0.0001), as well as relations between within-person changes in social perceptions and PA. Increases in negative interactions (particularly those with friends) were consistently associated with decreases in daily PA, whereas increases in positive interactions showed limited relations (srs = −0.22-0.34). Days with health comparisons were days with greater PA for women who had stronger overall interest in comparisons, but were days with less PA for women with weaker overall interest (srs = 0.22–0.33). PA did not differ between days with vs. without appearance comparisons.ConclusionsSocial perceptions show meaningful day-to-day variability and relations with college women’s daily PA, and specific associations may be useful for improving tailored interventions for college women.     

大学生恋爱状态与外表拒绝敏感性：外表吸引力自我觉知的中介作用

主要探讨大学生恋爱状态（恋爱中或单身）、个体外表吸引力自我觉知与外表拒绝敏感性之间的关系。采用恋爱状态问卷、外表拒绝敏感性量表、拒绝敏感度量表、基于外表的社会比较以及吸引力自评等测量工具,以班级为单位向随机选取的北京、四川以及安徽等地多所高校大学生进行施测,有效被试549人。结果发现：（1）大学生恋爱状态、外表吸引力自我觉知和外表拒绝敏感性之间相关显著;（2）大学生恋爱状态能够显著正向预测外表吸引力自我觉知,也能显著负向预测外表拒绝敏感性;（3）外表吸引力自我觉知在恋爱状态与外表拒绝敏感性之间具有显著的完全中介作用（间接效应值为0.47）,恋爱状态通过提升个体主观评估的外表吸引力,从而降低外表拒绝敏感性。     

祖辈共同养育模式下幼儿母子依恋对问题行为的影响：祖孙依恋的中介作用

采用幼儿依恋量表和儿童行为量表（Child Behavior Checklist, CBCL）测量265名祖辈共同养育幼儿的母子依恋、祖孙依恋和问题行为的情况,考察祖辈共同养育幼儿的祖孙依恋在母子依恋与问题行为的中介作用。结果发现：（1）祖辈共同养育幼儿的母子依恋与祖孙依恋呈显著正相关,幼儿的母子依恋与内化问题行为、外化问题行为呈显著负相关,幼儿的祖孙依恋与内化问题行为、外化问题行为呈显著负相关;（2）祖辈共同养育幼儿的祖孙依恋完全中介母子依恋对内化问题行为、外化问题行为的影响。     

MCMC estimation and some model-fit analysis of multidimensional IRT models

A Bayesian procedure to estimate the three-parameter normal ogive model and a generalization of the procedure to a model with multidimensional ability parameters are presented. The procedure is a generalization of a procedure by Albert (1992) for estimating the two-parameter normal ogive model. The procedure supports analyzing data from multiple populations and incomplete designs. It is shown that restrictions can be imposed on the factor matrix for testing specific hypotheses about the ability structure. The technique is illustrated using simulated and real data. The authors would like to thank Norman Verhelst for his valuable comments and ACT, CITO group and SweSAT for the use of their data.     

Temporal Interaction of Information and Belief

The temporal updating of an agent’s beliefs in response to a flow of information is modeled in a simple modal logic that, for every date t, contains a normal belief operator B _t and a non-normal information operator I _t which is analogous to the ‘only knowing’ operator discussed in the computer science literature. Soundness and completeness of the logic are proved and the relationship between the proposed logic, the AGM theory of belief revision and the notion of plausibility is discussed. A first draft of this paper was presented at the Workshop on Belief Change in Rational Agents: Perspectives from Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Economics, Dagstuhl (Germany), August 2005. Special Issue Formal Epistemology II. Edited by Branden Fitelson     

儿童的孤独感及与同伴交往的关系

孤独感是当一个人的社会关系网络比预期的更小或更不满意时产生的一种不愉快的情绪体验,儿童长期处于此状态会导致适应不良。孤独感的社交需要理论认为孤独感是对社交需要未满足的反应,强调孤独感的情感或感受层面;认知加工观主张孤独感的产生是因为个体对觉知到的人际关系现状不满意,强调孤独感的认知成分。同伴交往4个水平上的变量会影响到孤独感的产生,而孤独感作为一种消极的情绪体验,也会对同伴交往产生不良影响。未来研究应该多从家庭功能与同伴交往相结合的角度探讨孤独感的产生机制,对孤独儿童的干预研究也有待开展     

Combining versus analyzing multiple causes: how domain assumptions and task context affect integration rules

In everyday life, people typically observe fragments of causal networks. From this knowledge, people infer how novel combinations of causes they may never have observed together might behave. I report on 4 experiments that address the question of how people intuitively integrate multiple causes to predict a continuously varying effect. Most theories of causal induction in psychology and statistics assume a bias toward linearity and additivity. In contrast, these experiments show that people are sensitive to cues biasing various integration rules. Causes that refer to intensive quantities (e.g., taste) or to preferences (e.g., liking) bias people toward averaging the causal influences, whereas extensive quantities (e.g., strength of a drug) lead to a tendency to add. However, the knowledge underlying these processes is fallible and unstable. Therefore, people are easily influenced by additional task-related context factors. These additional factors include the way data are presented, the difficulty of the inference task, and transfer from previous tasks. The results of the experiments provide evidence for causal model and related theories, which postulate that domain-general representations of causal knowledge are influenced by abstract domain knowledge, data-driven task factors, and processing difficulty.     

Task difficulty and inertial properties of hand-held tools: An assessment of their concurrent effects on precision aiming

Aiming hand-held tools at targets in space entails adjustments in the dynamical organization of aiming patterns according to the required precision. We asked whether and how these adjustments are modified by the tool’s mass distribution. Twelve participants performed reciprocal aiming movements with a 50-cm long wooden probe. Kinematic patterns of probe movements were used as a window into the behavioral dynamic underlying performance of a reciprocal aiming task. We crossed three levels of task difficulty (IDs 2.8, 4.5 and 6.1) with two types of probe varying in their mass distribution (proximal vs distal loading). Movement duration was affected by task difficulty and probe loading (shorter for larger targets and proximal probe loading). Progressive deviations from a sinusoidal movement pattern were observed as task difficulty increased. Such deviations were more pronounced with proximal probe loading. Results point to a higher degree of non-linearity in aiming dynamics when the probe was loaded proximally, which might reflect employment of additional perceptual-motor processes to control the position of its less stable tip at the vicinity of the targets. More generally, the effects of probe loading on aiming pattern and dynamics suggest that perceptual-motor processes responding to task level constraints are sensitive to, and not independent from, biomechanical, end-effector constraints.     

The role of causal models in multiple judgments under uncertainty

Two studies examined a novel prediction of the causal Bayes net approach to judgments under uncertainty, namely that causal knowledge affects the interpretation of statistical evidence obtained over multiple observations. Participants estimated the conditional probability of an uncertain event (breast cancer) given information about the base rate, hit rate (probability of a positive mammogram given cancer) and false positive rate (probability of a positive mammogram in the absence of cancer). Conditional probability estimates were made after observing one or two positive mammograms. Participants exhibited a causal stability effect: there was a smaller increase in estimates of the probability of cancer over multiple positive mammograms when a causal explanation of false positives was provided. This was the case when the judgments were made by different participants (Experiment 1) or by the same participants (Experiment 2). These results show that identical patterns of observed events can lead to different estimates of event probability depending on beliefs about the generative causes of the observations.