The driver behaviour questionnaire in South-East Europe countries: Bulgaria,Romania and Serbia

Using data from three samples and more than 1000 participants, this study have examined the psychometric properties of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) in three countries from South-East Europe. Differences in driving behaviour between countries were also investigated. Exploratory factor analysis results supported the distinction between errors and violations in all three countries. Furthermore, the positive associations of both errors and violations with self-reported traffic accidents were also consistent in all three samples. In terms of differences in driving behaviour, Romanian drivers scored higher on many error and violation items in comparison to the other two countries. Also, speeding violations were the most common violations in all three countries. Overall, our results provide further support for using the DBQ to measure aberrant (i.e. errors and violations) driver behaviour.     

Bidirectional feature selection with global and local structure preservation for small size samples

Collecting samples is a challenging task for face recognition, especially for some real-world applications such as law enhancement and ID card identification, where there is usually single sample per person (SSPS) used to train a face recognition system. To extract discriminative features from the small size samples, in this paper we propose virtual samples via bidirectional feature selection with global and local structure preservation (VS-BFS-GL) to augment the number of training samples. In VS-BFS-GL, bidirectional feature selection is developed, which introduces L_2,1 norm to explore the face variations from both horizontal and vertical directions. Further, to include more variations in the virtual images, the global structure information and sample-specified local structure information of the SSPP training set are considered. By integrating bidirectional feature selection, global and local structure, the limited training samples are fully utilized and more knowledge are mined. To further improve the effectiveness of VS-BFS-GL, an auxiliary database containing different face variations can be used to explore the local structure information. We extensively evaluated the proposed approach on AR and FERET database. The promising recognition results demonstrate that VS-BFS-GL is robust to expression, pose and partial occlusion variations in the faces.     

School Perceptions of Children Raised by Grandparents

Increasing numbers of children raised by grandparents are students in schools. Their substitute family structure and precursors to the emergence of this family structure have implications for the children's school performance. Research suggests teachers view these children as at risk for difficult school functioning. The aforementioned judgment is problematic because teacher expectations, attributions, and biases are associated with stereotype threat that impacts student performance adversely. The author compares children raised by grandparents with children raised by parents and foster parents. The author examines the children's perceptions of their teachers' views of their school performance. He also examines the children's general feelings about school. Participants in the study were 6,550 students in Grades 6–8 from the nationally representative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. Nonparametric statistical analyses reveal children raised by grandparents believe teachers' view their school performance negatively when compared with children living with both parents. Strategies are described to improve the children's performance in school and to foster favorable teacher perceptions.     

内隐多效性选择的ERP证据

采用事件相关电位技术,考察内隐多效性选择及其神经机制。被试的任务是认真观看配对的纯色图片刺激,并进行分类按键反应。实验结果发现,在P2上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更大的P2波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更大的P2波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。在N2上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更小的N2波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更小的N2波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。在P3上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更大的P3波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更大的P3波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。研究结果表明当外显目标与内隐目标同时被呈现时,被试趋向于做多效性选择,这可能表明无意识信息加工具有相当大的权重。且右后部脑区可能是加工多效性刺激的核心和关键区域,P3成分可能反应了内隐多效性选择的精细加工过程,能够作为内隐多效性选择的有效的ERPs指标。     

When Intertemporal Rewards Are Hedonic,Larger Units of Wait Time Boost Patience

In intertemporal choices between smaller‐sooner (SS) and larger‐later (LL) rewards, five studies reveal that patience for the LL option is influenced by an interactive effect of the measurement units used to express wait time (large vs. small) and the type of the reward (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Specifically, larger time units boost patience, but more so when rewards are hedonic rather than utilitarian. In line with the numerosity heuristic, the effect of time units on patience is mediated by larger time units shrinking wait time perception. This effect arises because hedonic (vs. utilitarian) rewards promote a reliance on heuristics rather than systematic calculations. Therefore, a more calculative mindset diminishes the effect of units even for hedonic rewards and eliminates the hedonic‐utilitarian asymmetry. These results contribute to research on numerosity, intertemporal choice, and hedonic‐utilitarian differences, and offer a simple tool for practitioners to influence patience.     

The synergistic effect of prosociality and physical attractiveness on mate desirability

Mate selection requires a prioritization and joint evaluation of different traits present or absent in potential mates. Herein, we focus on two such traits – physical attractiveness and prosociality – and examine how they jointly shape impressions of overall desirability. We report on two related experiments which make use of an innovative methodology combining large samples of raters and target persons (i.e., stimuli) and information on targets’ behaviour in economic games representing altruistic behaviour (Experiment 1) and trustworthiness (Experiment 2), two important facets of prosociality. In accordance with predictions derived from a cognitive perspective on mate choice and sexual strategies theory, the results show that the impact of being prosocial on an individual's overall desirability was increased further by them also being physically attractive, but only in long-term mating contexts. Furthermore, we show that men's mate preferences for certain prosocial traits (i.e., trustworthiness) were more context-dependent than women's due to differential evolutionary pressures for ancestral men and women.     

Discounting: A practical guide to multilevel analysis of choice data

Multilevel modeling provides the ability to simultaneously evaluate the discounting of individuals and groups by examining choices between smaller sooner and larger later rewards. A multilevel logistic regression approach is advocated in which sensitivity to relative reward magnitude and relative delay are considered as separate contributors to choice. Examples of how to fit choice data using multilevel logistic models are provided to help researchers in the adoption of these methods.     

A Systematic Scoping Review of the Choice Architecture Movement: Toward Understanding When and Why Nudges Work

In this paper, we provide a domain‐general scoping review of the nudge movement by reviewing 422 choice architecture interventions in 156 empirical studies. We report the distribution of the studies across countries, years, domains, subdomains of applicability, intervention types, and the moderators associated with each intervention category to review the current state of the nudge movement. Furthermore, we highlight certain characteristics of the studies and experimental and reporting practices that can hinder the accumulation of evidence in the field. Specifically, we found that 74% of the studies were mainly motivated to assess the effectiveness of the interventions in one specific setting, while only 24% of the studies focused on the exploration of moderators or underlying processes. We also observed that only 7% of the studies applied power analysis, 2% used guidelines aiming to improve the quality of reporting, no study in our database was preregistered, and the used intervention nomenclatures were non‐exhaustive and often have overlapping categories. Building on our current observations and proposed solutions from other fields, we provide directly applicable recommendations for future research to support the evidence accumulation on why and when nudges work. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Cross‐Linguistic Differences in the Grammaticalization of Future Time Reference Influence Intertemporal Choices

According to Chen's (2013) Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (LSH), our native language affects our economic behavior. We present three studies investigating how cross‐linguistic differences in the grammaticalization of future‐time reference (FTR) affect intertemporal choices. In a series of decision scenarios about finance and health issues, we let speakers of altogether five languages that represent FTR with increasing strength, that is, Chinese, German, Danish, Spanish, and English, choose between hypothetical sooner‐smaller and later‐larger reward options. While the LSH predicts a present‐bias that increases with FTR‐strength, our decision makers preferred later‐larger options and this future‐bias increased with FTR‐strength. In multiple regressions, the FTR‐strength effect persisted when controlled for socioeconomic and cultural differences. We discuss why our findings deviate from the LSH and ask in how far the FTR‐strength effect represents a habitual constitution of linguistic relativity or an instance of online decision framing.