Risk behaviour and mental workload: Multimodal assessment techniques applied to motorbike riding simulation

We present data from an ongoing research project on the cognitive, emotional and neuropsychological basis of risk behaviour. The main aim of the project is to build a model of risk behaviour so that if we know certain cognitive, behavioural and emotional variables, we will be able to predict decisions made in the face of uncertainty and risk, with the final goal of designing programs for evaluating, preventing and controlling risk behaviour. The objective of the present study was to look for individual differences in hazard perception during a static riding simulation and their relationship with mental workload. We used a multidimensional methodology, including behavioural, subjective and physiological data. The behavioural measures were obtained in a static riding simulation during eight hazard situations. We evaluated whether eye activity measures correlated with cognitive workload and different types of risky behaviours. Eye movement parameters were measured using a video-based eye tracking system. We found that risk-prone individuals showed specific patterns of risky behaviours and that peak of saccadic velocity and subjective mental workload indexes were both reliable indicators of risk proneness. Mental workload was higher for participants showing attitudes to risk behaviours probably because of a lack of conscious awareness of specific cues indicating dangerous scenarios.     

Emotional states influence forward gait during music listening based on familiarity with music selections

Music elicits a wide range of human emotions, which influence human movement. We sought to determine how emotional states impact forward gait during music listening, and whether the emotional effects of music on gait differ as a function of familiarity with music. Twenty-four healthy young adults completed walking trials while listening to four types of music selections: experimenter-selected music (unfamiliar-pleasant), its dissonant counterpart (unfamiliar-unpleasant), each participant’s self-selected favorite music (familiar-pleasant), and its dissonant counterpart (familiar-unpleasant). Faster gait velocity, cadence, and stride time, as well as longer stride length were identified during pleasant versus unpleasant music conditions. Increased gait velocity, stride length, and cadence as well as reduced stride time were positively correlated with subjective ratings of emotional arousal and pleasure as well as musical emotions such as happiness-elation, nostalgia-longing, interest-expectancy, pride-confidence, and chills, and they were negatively related to anger-irritation and disgust-contempt. Moreover, familiarity with music interacted with emotional responses to influence gait kinematics. Gait velocity was faster in the familiar-pleasant music condition relative to the familiar-unpleasant condition, primarily due to longer stride length. In contrast, no differences in any gait parameters were found between unfamiliar-pleasant and unfamiliar-unpleasant music conditions. These results suggest emotional states influence gait behavior during music listening and that such effects are altered by familiarity with music. Our findings provide fundamental evidence of the impact of musical emotion on human gait, with implications for using music to enhance motor performance in clinical and performance settings.     

Gait,balance, mobility and muscle strength in people with anxiety compared to healthy individuals

BackgroundAnxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders. Changes in psychomotor behavior can be observed in gross motor skills, with gait disturbances thought to reflect defective brain functions in psychiatric conditions. While balance deficits are well documented in anxiety, only little is known about gait characteristics of people with anxiety.ObjectiveThis study wishes to examine the existence of differences in gait, balance, mobility and muscle strength between people with anxiety and healthy individuals, and to investigate the relationship between level of anxiety and motor characteristics.MethodsAn observational study was conducted in a psychiatric out-patient unit at a large Israeli general hospital. The sample consisted of 93 participants, ages 18–65: 48 of them (27 female, 21 male) categorized as having anxiety, and 45 (25 female, 20 male) without anxiety. Participants were divided into two groups of various ages and both genders, and completed two questionnaires and four physical tests: objective anxiety assessment (Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale); spatiotemporal gait parameters (10-meter walking test); balance function (Unipedal Stance Test); muscle strength evaluation, and mobility (Time Up and Go Test). No attempt was made to correlate between the anxiety and control groups based on age and/or gender.ResultsParticipants with anxiety (both genders) were characterized by slower walking speed, shorter step length, and fewer steps per minute (p < 0.001), as well as balance deficiency and mobility dysfunction (p < 0.001), compared to the control group. Muscle strength in women with anxiety was found to be significantly lower than in healthy women.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to examine spatiotemporal gait components in patients with anxiety. Based on the findings, there is room to consider implementing gait analysis into the physical examination of patients with anxiety, as well as muscle strength, balance, and mobility function. Correct assessment and proper treatment of these aspects might contribute to the well-being of patients with anxiety.     

Racial bias in driver yielding behavior at crosswalks

Psychological and social identity-related factors have been shown to influence drivers’ behaviors toward pedestrians, but no previous studies have examined the potential for drivers’ racial bias to impact yielding behavior with pedestrians. If drivers’ yielding behavior results in differential behavior toward Black and White pedestrians, this may lead to disparate pedestrian crossing experiences based on race and potentially contribute to disproportionate safety outcomes for minorities. We tested the hypothesis that drivers’ yielding behavior is influenced by pedestrians’ race in a controlled field experiment at an unsignalized midblock marked crosswalk in downtown Portland, Oregon. Six trained male research team participants (3 White, 3 Black) simulated an individual pedestrian crossing, while trained observers cataloged the number of cars that passed and the time until a driver yielded. Results (88 pedestrian trials, 173 driver-subjects) revealed that Black pedestrians were passed by twice as many cars and experienced wait times that were 32% longer than White pedestrians. Results support the hypothesis that minority pedestrians experience discriminatory treatment by drivers at crosswalks.     

Breast Cancer and the Descent: The Loss and Return of Spring

This article approaches breast cancer as an initiation into a healing process that provides the opportunity for the transformation of a basic fault in the personality. Breast cancer will be approached as a metaphor alerting one to a crises of interiority, a loss of connection to ones inner dimension and ones feminine consciousness. This metaphor contains both the loss of the connection and the possibility of its recovery. The process involves a velocity of descent very difficult to endure; it involves a profound and accelerated unraveling of the rationality that previously served as a container stabilizing the ego. The perilousness of the descent imagery reflects the precipitousness of this unraveling. The precipitous descent is seen as an attempt of the soul to heal and reintegrate the personality by revisiting and illuminating a space abandoned long ago. The integration of this part of the personality results in a return of generativity, energy, and creativity.     

Combined Effects of Movement Velocity and Duration on Programming Time: Spijkers (1989) Revisited

The goal of the present study was to determine the combined effects of movement velocity and duration on motor programming. Subjects were submitted to a two-choice reaction time task that could be completed by aiming movements differing in the mean velocity at which they were to be produced as well as by their movement time. The results of the present study indicate that, in each pair of responses used, the responses having the higher mean velocity were initiated faster than those having the lower mean velocity. Contrary to Spijkers' (1989) study, the different movement time pairings did not modify the effect of movement velocity on response programming time. Moreover, the same pattern of results was observed whether or not the subjects were permitted to visually guide their ongoing movement. Thus, Spijkers' proposition, that the type of control one may use to guide an aiming movement needs to be determined before movement initiation can take place, was not confirmed.     

Emotional influences on sit-to-walk in healthy young adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate influences of emotional feelings on sit-to-walk (STW). Eighteen healthy young adults performed STW while feeling sadness, anger, joy and neutral emotion. Emotions were elicited using an autobiographical memories task. We used an optoelectronic motion capture system to collect motion data and assessed kinematics of STW. Emotion-related differences in STW kinematics were consistent with differences in movement speed. Compared to neutral emotion, sadness was associated with increased STW duration and phase durations, decreased peak forward and vertical center-of-mass (COM) velocity, increased drop in forward COM velocity, and increased forward and vertical normalized jerk score (NJS). Anger and joy were associated with decreased STW duration and phase durations, increased peak forward and vertical COM velocity, decreased drop in forward COM velocity, and decreased forward and vertical NJS compared to neutral emotion. Findings suggest that emotional feelings affect movement speed, hesitation, and movement smoothness during STW.     

Evaluation of motorized two-wheeler rider responses towards jaywalking pedestrians through mockup control studies for urban streets

This study aims to model the motorized two-wheeler (MTW) riders’ evasive-action behavior towards jaywalking pedestrians using a mockup study. The brake reaction times (BRTs), approach speeds, decelerations, headings, and yaw rates were analyzed for two surprise scenarios (scenarios 1 and 3), one stationary scenario (scenario-2), and one expected scenario (scenario-4). In total, 50 riders participated in the mockup study. The results revealed that the 90th percentile BRT for the expected and surprise scenarios were 3.6 and 1.6 s, respectively. Further, repeated-measures ANOVA was performed followed by mixed effect modeling to ascertain the effect of conflict severity (two groups: group-1 with Time to Collision (TTC) < 1.5 s and group-2 with TTC > 1.5 s) and scenario type (three groups: scenarios 1, 3 and 4) on BRT. The results indicated that the main effects were significant while the interaction effect was not significant. The positive and significant coefficient (0.32) of TTC group-2 indicated higher BRTs than TTC group-1. Considering scenario-1 as the base scenario, the coefficient of scenario 3 (-0.02) indicated that scenario-1 and scenario-3 had a similar effect on BRT, while the coefficient of scenario-4 (1.47) indicated higher BRTs compared to scenario-1. The analysis of evasive action behavior revealed that 32% of riders performed hard braking in surprise scenarios. Further, yaw rate values at the crossing point indicated a loss of control of MTW in 90% of surprise events. The observations from this study provide a basis for developing countermeasures to improve pedestrian and MTW rider safety.     

Revisiting the level-of-service framework for pedestrian comfortability: Velocity depicts more accurate perceived congestion than local density

The evaluation of pedestrian comfortability is important for the construction and management of walkable spaces. Pedestrian level-of-service (LOS), which is mostly categorized by density, has been widely applied and is believed to be capable of indicating the comfortability of the crowd. However, there is a lack of evidence that physically measured LOS reflects psychological comfortability, let alone the comparison between the performances of different candidate indicators, including the velocity and different local densities. Here, we show that walking velocity depicts pedestrian perceived congestion more accurately than density. In our experiments on pedestrians in a room-egress scenario with an inner obstacle, we obtained objective physical trajectory data from video analysis as well as subjective perception data from a questionnaire survey. The performance of the velocity and four types of local densities in reproducing pedestrian perceptions were numerically evaluated. We found that the velocity outperformed the local density. The lower performance of local densities was mainly caused by the pedestrians located at the back of the crowd, who walked at lower velocities and perceived higher congestion, despite their lower local densities that would correspond to less crowdedness from a physical viewpoint. Besides, the perceived congestion of pedestrians was shown to be affected by the initial pedestrian positions at the crowd, the obstacle layout, and the pedestrians’ age and gender. Furthermore, we suggest that the larger the gap between the desired and actual velocities, the larger the extent of the perceived congestion. We expect that our findings will contribute to a more accurate evaluation of pedestrian comfortability, which could help improve the walkable spaces of various infrastructures.     

Predicting pedestrians’ intention to cross the road in front of automated vehicles in risky situations

Due to the absence of a human driver, the introduction of fully automated vehicles (FAVs) may bring new safety challenges to the traffic system, especially when FAVs interact with vulnerable road users such as pedestrians. To ensure safer interactions between pedestrians and FAVs, this questionnaire-based study aims to understand Australian pedestrians’ intention to engage in risky road-crossing behaviors when they interact with FAVs vs. human-driven vehicles (HDVs). A 2 × 2 between-subject design was utilized, in which two risky road-crossing scenarios were designed and took into account the vehicle type (FAV vs. HDV) and vehicle speed (30 km/h vs. 50 km/h). A total of 493 participants (aged 18–77) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions and completed an online questionnaire based on the extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). This questionnaire measured pedestrians’ intentions to cross the road in the assigned scenarios as well as the motivational factors behind these intentions in terms of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, perceived risk and trust in the vehicle. The results show that pedestrians had significantly higher intentions to cross the road in front of approaching FAVs than HDVs. Participants also reported a lower risk perception of crossing in front of FAVs and greater trust in this type of vehicle. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control were significant predictors of intentions to engage in risky road-crossing behavior. Findings of this study provide important implications for the development and implementation of FAVs in the future road transport system.