The prevalence of in-vehicle driving distractions in road traffic collisions as a function of road type

While some previous research suggests that conversing with passengers is the most prevalent in-vehicle distraction while driving, others have concluded instead that it is mobile phone use. One possible explanation for these differences is that distraction prevalence varies with road type. To test this proposal the current study investigated the prevalence of in-vehicle driving distraction in road traffic collisions (RTCs) as recorded in national records from the US and New Zealand. Analysis using odds ratios suggested conversing with passengers to be a more prevalent distraction in RTCs on minor roads than on major roads, and mobile phone use to be a more prevalent distraction on major roads than on minor roads. These results show the importance of considering the type of road when investigating the prevalence of driving distractions in RTCs in future research.     

Dialogic reflection for professional development through conversations on a social networking site

This article provides insights into how teachers benefited from their engagement in teaching-related conversations on Facebook timelines. The main data generated from participant observation and semi-structured interviews involving 34 English language teachers were analyzed using thematic and discourse analysis approaches. The analysis reveals that the teachers’ supportive conversations on the timelines revolve around troublesome experiences encountered in school which serve as a trigger for the teachers to engage in dialogic reflection, which enables them to have a better interpretation of their professional lives. The findings from this study point towards the need for reconceptualization of ‘teacher professional development’ as an opportunity for the construction of a collective and satisfying interpretation of themselves-in-the-world, where teachers work together to make sense of both mundane reality and stressful teaching-related events through the co-construction of social support.     

Conversing while driving: The importance of visual information for conversation modulation

Multiple studies have shown an increased accident risk due to telephoning while driving. On the other hand, driving with passengers leads to a decreased accident risk. One explanation is a conversation modulation by passengers in cars which leads to a different conversation pattern which is not so detrimental to driving as that when phoning. A driving simulator study was conducted in order to examine this conversation modulation more closely and to find out more about the factors involved in this modulation, especially about the role of visual information available to the passenger. In a within-subject design the conversational patterns of 33 drivers and passengers in different in-car settings (passenger as usual, passenger without front view or passenger without view of the driver) were compared to a hands-free cell phone and to a hands-free cell phone with additional visual information either about the driving situation or the driver. Participants were instructed to have a naturalistic small-talk with a friend. Results of the drivers’ speaking behavior showed a reduction of speaking while driving. Compared to a conversation partner on the cell phone, a passenger in the car varies his speaking rhythm by speaking more often but shorter. Further analyses showed that this effect is also found with a cell phone when providing the conversation partner additional visual information either about the driving situation or the driver. This latter finding supports the idea that conversation modulation is not triggered by being in the car but by the visual information about the driver’s state and the driving situation.     

My Scholarly Life in Cybernetics

This article narrates how I discovered cybernetics, who inspired me to make the contributions of which I am proud, and the ideas that led me to recognize the importance of understanding the social world we live in as a consequence of what we do in language. It took me some time before I recognized that circular causality and digitalization that made cybernetics the driver of the current revolution toward a computationally autonomous information society had serious limitations. When used to explain human involvements, the mathematics of cybernetics trivializes what we do to each other and blinds us to recognize how cybernetics transformed society. Studying conversations and discourses made me aware of how cybernetic vocabularies, guiding concepts, and computational metaphors were enacted. By contrast to (first- or second-order) cybernetics, I learned that a cybernetics that is practiced in conversations and acknowledges the social consequences of what it generates had to be reflexive. Shifting attention from causal circularities to reflexive circularities opens up huge new areas for exploring socially meaningful contributions and criticizing the epistemologies of mindless discursive practices (e,g., of claiming the superiority of artificial intelligence and the power of computers). Such claims merely entrap their believers into inaction.     

Living and Loving Cybernetics

How we learn to interpret our experiences influences the sorts of experiences we seek. In other words, habits of mind become habits of action. Cybernetics, as a way of thinking, changes how we act. My testimony demonstrates that the appeal of cybernetics remains strong today, for those who are lucky enough to stumble across its beauty, as I was. Cybernetics contributed to the theoretical foundation and conceptualization of my dissertation, and it positively influences my teaching, whether I am teaching cybernetics explicitly or not. While I am fortunate to be able to integrate cybernetics in my work, what delights me most is living it in my every day.     

Understanding the emotional past: relations between parent and child contributions in emotionally negative and nonnegative events

The past event conversations of 33 mothers with their 3-year-old children (18 girls and 15 boys) were selected from a larger sample based on their discussion of negative events. Negative events included both those that were negative in topic and those that contained negative incidents but were otherwise positively themed. Within-subjects comparisons were made between the negative events and a neutral or positive event. There were few differences in how mothers and their children talked about negative and nonnegative events. Children did include more interpretations (internal state and causal references) in their negative event conversations. For both event types, mothers who talked more about the past events had children who reported more. When maternal talkativeness was controlled, involving children in the negative event conversations through deflecting the conversational turn predicted children's total contributions and number of interpretations. Repeating information and requests for information while constraining the topic was negatively related to the number of details children reported for nonnegative past events. Conversations about minor negative experiences demonstrate that mothers can influence children's involvement in discussions and understanding of the past.     

The relationship between prosody and breathing in spontaneous discourse

This article is concerned with the role of prosody in discourse. Three experiments explored the relationship between inspiration, declination, and syntactic boundaries in normal and RHD participants. Fundamental frequency and intensity were measured at the beginning and end of breath units excised from conversational samples. The results revealed evidence of declination of intensity in all samples measured. However, resetting of fundamental frequency was observed only in the samples of normal participants and then only when a breath coincided with the beginning of a sentence. The results suggest that resetting and declination play separate roles in discourse parsing.     

Recognition memory for utterances in conversation

This study reports an experiment on incidental recognition memory for conversation. A number of people listened to a dyadic conversation and were tested immediately afterwards or four days later. The two people in the tape-recorded conversation did not know each other, nor did the audience know the two speaker-listeners on the tape. This design was used to further clarify the role of familiarity and personal participation for memory of conversational discourse. Gist memory was high in both conditions, with lower performance after four days. Surface memory could be verified, and the level of the variables used to index surface memory was about the same in both the immediate and delayed condition. With this study we have taken a step towards better understanding of the role of familiarity and participation in communicative events for memory of these events. Even in this "minimum" participation and familiarity study, we found some indications of verbatim memory.     

Ideas of self and community: Ethical implications for a communitarian conception of moral autonomy

This paper attempts to construct a concept of moral autonomy thai is compatible with a relationally-based or care-based ethical theory. After critiquing the traditional liberal identification of the ethical self with an abstract rational self detached from community and historical narrative, I argue that the ethical self emerges in a dialectical relation with the community itself. Essentially, I argue for a concept of autonomy that will be analyzed as a critical perspective from within a community rather than as a privileged view from outside. Central to this argument is an understanding of the nature and role of moral conversation in the regeneration of community. The nature of that conversation is examined.