Consciousness and Self‐Regulation in Mobile Communication

The everyday use of mobile devices is sometimes performed in a minimally conscious manner (e.g., automaticity, habits, impulses), whereas other times it is performed in a highly conscious manner (e.g., immersion, presence, absorption). In Study 1, we surveyed individuals (n = 250) to evaluate the seemingly oppositional relationship between automatic (less conscious) and immersive (more conscious) tendencies toward texting. Despite their standard separation, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that automaticity and immersion were actually positively related independent of usage frequency. In Study 2 (n = 526), these consciousness tendencies were related to select facets of trait self‐control and mindfulness. Together, these studies underline the importance of media cognition in combination with personality factors for understanding the psychology of mobile device use.     

Can Acceptance,Mindfulness, and Self-Compassion Be Learned by Smartphone Apps? A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

The potential health benefits of acceptance, mindfulness, and self-compassion are well-documented. However, interventions that teach these principles typically rely on face-to-face delivery, which can limit their dissemination. Delivering these interventions through smartphone apps could help overcome this. This meta-analysis examined whether principles of acceptance, mindfulness, and self-compassion can be learned through smartphone apps. Twenty-seven randomized controlled trials were included. Smartphone apps that included acceptance and/or mindfulness components resulted in significantly higher levels of acceptance/mindfulness than comparison conditions (k = 33; g = 0.29; 95% CI = 0.17, 0.41). These effects were moderated by the type of comparison and whether reminders to engage were offered. Smartphone apps also resulted in significantly lower levels of psychological distress than comparisons (k = 22; g = −0.32; 95% CI = −0.48, −0.16). Meta-regression revealed a negative relationship between the effect sizes for mindfulness/acceptance and the effect sizes for distress. Smartphone apps produced significantly greater increases in self-compassion than comparisons (k = 9; g = 0.31; 95% CI = 0.07, 0.56), although the quality of RCTs in this analysis was poor. Findings suggest that principles of acceptance, mindfulness, and self-compassion may be learned through cheap, easily accessible, and low-intensity interventions delivered via smartphone apps. However, the quality of available evidence is poor, as low risk of bias was noted in few trials (18%) and the observed effects were likely explained by a digital placebo.     

Bicyclists’ speed adaptation strategies when conducting self-paced vs. system-paced smartphone tasks in traffic

The increasing prevalence of mobile phone usage while cycling has raised concerns, even though the number of cyclists involved in accidents does not increase at a comparable rate. A reason for this may be how cyclists adapt travelling speed and task execution to the current traffic situation. The aim of this study is to investigate speed adaptation among cyclists when conducting self-paced (initiated by the cyclist) vs. system-paced (initiated by somebody else) smartphone tasks in real traffic.Twenty-two cyclists completed a track in real traffic while listening to music, receiving and making calls, receiving and sending text messages, and searching for information on the internet. The route and the types of tasks were controlled, but the cyclists could choose rather freely when and where along the route to carry out the tasks, thus providing semi-naturalistic data on compensatory behaviour.The results clearly show that cyclists use conscious strategies to adapt their speed to accommodate the execution of secondary phone tasks. Regarding tactical behaviour, it was found that cyclists kept on cycling in 80% of the system-paced cases and in 70% of the self-paced cases. In the remaining cases, the cyclists chose to execute the phone task while standing still or when walking. Compared to the baseline (17.6 ± 3.5 km/h), the mean speed was slightly increased when the cyclists listened to music (18.2 ± 3.7 km/h) and clearly decreased when they interacted with the phone (13.0 ± 5.0 km/h). The speed reduction profile differed between self-paced and system-paced tasks with a preparatory speed reduction before task initiation for self-paced tasks.In conclusion, when the cyclists had the chance they either stopped or adapted their speed proactively to accommodate the execution of the phone task. For self-paced tasks, the speed reduction was finalised before task initialisation, and for system-paced tasks the speed adaptation occurred in reaction to the incoming task. It is recommended to investigate whether the observed compensatory behaviour is enough to offset the possible negative effects of smartphone use.     

Perceived risk vs actual driving performance during distracted driving: A comparative analysis of phone use and other secondary distractions

The present study attempts to explore the association of drivers’ risk perception towards phone usage as well as other everyday distractions (operating a music player and eating during driving), and their driving performance observed during these distracted conditions. For this purpose, driving simulator experiments were conducted with 90 participants to collect their driving performance data and a questionnaire was conducted to obtain their basic details along with their risk perceptions. Firstly, the driving performance was divided into clusters using hierarchical clustering and the clustered subgroups were compared for crash and non-crash cases to identify the groups having significant performance degradation. Based on this comparison, the driving performance subgroups were then divided into the following crash risk probabilities: High risk, Moderate risk and Low risk. Further, the associations of perceived risk with these performance subgroups and other potential factors were analyzed using association rules mining technique. Most of the drivers (72.06%) reported texting as an extremely risky task. But, surprisingly none of them considered conversation as an extremely risky task. However, in case of conversation, it was found that even though the professional drivers reported the task to be not at all risky, the observed crash risk was high for them (S = 5.21%, C = 67.86%), indicating an underestimation of the associated risk by the drivers. Similarly, the results revealed that for music player and eating tasks, drivers reported the distracting tasks to be less risky, but, in some instances, their driving performance was associated with higher chances of crash occurrence. Many interesting associations of risk perception and driving performance with respect to demographic and driving characteristics were also obtained. The findings can be useful while designing the awareness programs related to distracted driving with an aim to reduce such practices.     

Ethical and Legal Issues Addressing the Use of Mobile Health (mHealth) as an Adjunct to Psychotherapy

mHealth refers to the rapidly evolving use of mobile devices for health care treatment purposes, particularly the use of apps and texting as adjuncts to psychotherapy. Although there is currently an extensive literature on issues related to telehealth, to date little guidance has been developed to help professionals function ethically in the rapidly emerging area of mHealth. This article identifies the major ethical considerations that need attention and proposes several recommendations to address mHealth use as an adjunct to psychotherapy, including the pressing need for relevant American Psychological Association practice guidelines to assist mental health providers in the ethical implementation of mHealth.     

Overall performance impairment and crash risk due to distracted driving: A comprehensive analysis using structural equation modelling

Distracted driving leads to performance changes in both longitudinal and lateral control. However, driving performance, being a multidimensional phenomenon, is very difficult to be interpreted from individual performance measures. The present study aimed to exhibit the distraction impacts on overall driving performance estimated by a single measure rather than assessing distraction effects on individual performance metrics such as speed, acceleration, lateral variation, etc. The study also focused on modelling and quantifying the impacts of overall deteriorated driving performance on crash risk. To achieve the objectives, a comparative analysis of investigating phone and music player usage was conducted using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). In total, 90 drivers’ demographic details and driving performance data in distracted and non-distracted driving environments were collected. Firstly, the latent variable “performance degradation” was derived from longitudinal and lateral performance measures. Then the structural model revealed a positive relationship between the distractions and the overall performance degradation. Finally, the crash risk was modelled against the presence of distraction and performance degradation. With a factor loading of 0.29, the impact of deteriorated driving performance (i.e., indirect impact) was found to be the highest among all the contributory factors of the crash risk. Further, the results showed that among the distractions (i.e., direct impact), texting had the highest impact (factor loading = 0.28) on crash risk followed by visual-manual tasks related to music player (factor loading = 0.21). Thus, the present study quantified the effects of deteriorated driving performance caused by distracted driving on the crash risk. Further, the study also presented quantified effects of each distracting activity on the crash risk which accounted for the factors that could not be considered through the performance degradation measure. The approach used in the present study can be adopted in designing the countermeasures using advanced driver warning systems.     

Bicyclists’ visual strategies when conducting self-paced vs. system-paced smartphone tasks in traffic

Visual distraction among cyclists interacting with their mobile phones is a growing concern. Yet, very little research has actually investigated how cyclists apply visual strategies and adapt task execution depending on the traffic situation. The aim of this study is to investigate visual behaviour of cyclists when conducting self-paced (initiated by the cyclist) vs. system-paced (initiated by somebody else) smartphone tasks in traffic.Twenty-two cyclists completed a track in real traffic while listening to music, receiving and making calls, receiving and sending text messages, and searching for information on the internet. The route and the types of tasks were controlled, but the cyclists could choose rather freely when and where along the route to carry out the tasks, thus providing semi-naturalistic data on compensatory behaviour.The results show that the baseline and music conditions were similar in terms of visual behaviour. When interacting with the phone, it was found that glances towards the phone mostly came at the expense of glances towards traffic irrelevant gaze targets and also led to shortened glance durations to traffic relevant gaze targets, while maintaining the number of glances. This indicates that visual “spare capacity” is used for the execution of the telephone tasks. The task type influenced the overall task duration and the overall glance intensity towards the phone, but not the mean nor maximum duration of individual glances. Task pacing was the factor that influenced visual behaviour the most, with longer mean and maximum glance durations for self-paced tasks.In conclusion, the cyclists used visual strategies to integrate the handling of mobile phones into their cycling behaviour. Glances directed towards the phone did not lead to traffic relevant gaze targets being missed. In system-paced scenarios, the cyclists checked the traffic more frequently and intensively than in self-paced tasks. This leads to the assumption that cyclists prepare for self-initiated tasks by for example choosing a suitable location. Future research should investigate whether these strategies also exists amongst drivers and other road user groups.     

抑制控制训练对手机依赖大学生的干预效果

依照手机成瘾倾向量表得分及手机使用时间记录从548名被试中筛选出60名手机依赖大学生,将其随机分配到抑制控制训练组和非训练组进行实验。预期通过抑制控制训练提升手机依赖大学生抑制控制能力,降低其手机依赖水平。结果发现：训练组被试在接受为期8周的抑制控制训练任务后,手机依赖总分、手机使用时间和非训练组相比显著降低,抑制控制能力显著提升。结果表明抑制控制训练对手机依赖大学生的干预效果明显。