Feedback and driver situation awareness (SA): A comparison of SA measures and contexts

The dominant technological trajectory in vehicle design brings with it similarly dominant driver performance issues in regard to vehicle feedback and driver situational awareness (SA). Three experiments are reported in this paper that describe not only the effects on driver SA of manipulations of vehicle feedback but also illuminate issues concerned with SA measurement methods and contexts. The findings suggest that current trends in vehicle design may contribute little towards a driver’s SA and, in fact, may actually show a generalized trend towards decreasing it. The efficacy of verbal protocol and probe recall SA measurement techniques is noted in terms of observing this effect. On the other hand, a concerning dissociation occurred with findings from a self-report measure of SA. Drivers appear to show a concerning lack of self-awareness of their SA and, indeed, any shortfall in it.     

Aging: I don’t want to be a cyborg!

Examination is made of a range of cyborg solutions to bodily problems due to damage, but here with particular reference to aging. Both technological and animal implants, transplants and prosthetic devices are phenomenologically analyzed. The resultant trade-off phenomena are compared to popular culture technofantasies and desires and finally to human attitudes toward mortality and contingency. The parallelism of resistance to contingent existence and to becoming a cyborg is noted.     

伤害回避的脑机制及其生物基础

伤害回避是指个体对厌恶刺激信号做出强烈的反应,并学会被动地回避惩罚的一种倾向,这一倾向使得个体反复思考未来的结局,并谨慎小心地对待不确定情景中的事件,进而更有可能诱发情感障碍。伤害回避涉及的神经网络包括三个子网络,即额顶叶-前扣带皮层的连接、皮层-杏仁核的连接和白质通道的结构性连接,这三个子网络分别与羞怯感-易疲劳性、预期担心以及不确定环境中的害怕情绪有关。而其生物基础则包括单一基因多态性和基因多态间的交互作用。今后的研究应该集中在深化伤害回避神经网络与生物基础间的联合机制、研究三种及以上基因多态间的交互作用、考察其他因素对基因效应的调节作用、注重伤害回避四种亚型相关神经网络之间的连接、探讨5-HT4等其他几种5-羟色胺受体多态性与伤害回避的关系以及分析伤害回避内部机制在抗抑郁治疗中的作用等方面。     

适宜技术与诊疗最优化的可行性研究

在案例分析的基础上,作出了医生是临床诊疗中适宜技术的主要选择者的判断;论证了运用适宜技术实现诊疗最优化的可行性;认为适宜技术难以选择和实施的主要原因是利益关系、责任心不强和管理措施不到位;提出了必须着力培育适合于适宜技术生长的土壤的对策,即:实行政策引导与资金支持、进一步加大监管力度、营造良好的氛围、高度重视并加强医生道德素质的培养。     

The crying boss: Activating “human resources” through sensitivity training in 1970s Sweden

This article examines the introduction of “sensitivity training” to 1970s Swedish work life. Drawing upon a range of empirical materials, I explore the politics that were involved in the process of translating and adapting this group dynamic method to the Swedish context and consider how its proponents argued for its value. By approaching sensitivity training as an attempt to govern, shape, and regulate both human beings and the work organizations of which they were a part, I argue that sensitivity training presents an unexpectedly early example of a governing rationality that has elsewhere been described and theorized as “neoliberal.” The fact that sensitivity training was established in Swedish work life already in the early 1970s thus challenges the historiography of neoliberal modes of government, which have elsewhere been associated with a neoliberal shift in state policies occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how emotionally liberating practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s were embraced by some of the most politically influential actors in contemporary Swedish society, such as the corporate sector and the trade unions. As blue-collar trade unions and social democrats voiced increasingly far-reaching demands concerning workplace democracy and improved workplace conditions, advocates of sensitivity training presented their method as crucial to the process of “democratizing” and “humanizing” Swedish work life. Intimately associated with the new therapies of humanistic psychology, sensitivity training was used within the corporate sector to foster a more emotional and authentic leadership style that would embrace the values of emotional awareness, self-expression, and self-actualization. The crying boss emerged in this context as a key figure in the project of creating a “democratic” and psychologically satisfying organization. Yet, sensitivity training was also described as a means for companies to make better use of what was now asserted as their most important economic asset: the human being. From the outset, the idealistic vision of an emotionally liberated, democratic workplace was thus entangled with a specific kind of economic rationality, in which the emotionally liberated, self-actualizing individual emerged as a capital or asset that would be better utilized if the organization allowed—even encouraged—employees to engage in their own well-being and self-optimization.     

Measuring drivers’ visual information needs during braking: A simulator study using a screen-occlusion method

It is commonly accepted that vision plays an important role in car braking, but it is unknown how people brake in the absence of visual information. In this simulator study, we measured drivers’ braking behaviour while they had to stop their car at designated positions on the road. The access to visual information was manipulated by occluding the screen at the start of half of the braking trials, while the temporal demand was manipulated by varying the time-to-arrival (TTA). Results showed that for the longer TTA values (⩾6 s), participants in the occlusion condition stopped too early and at variable positions on the road as compared to the control condition. In the occlusion condition, participants were likely to apply an intermediate brake pedal depression, whereas in the control condition participants more often applied low or high pedal depressions. The results are interpreted in light of a distance estimation test, in which we found that participants underestimated the actual distance by 70%.