The safety performance of connected vehicles on slippery horizontal curves through enhancing truck drivers’ situational awareness: A driving simulator experiment

Although drivers can adequately adjust their operating speed according to the road curvature, they show a lack of recognition regarding the pavement friction conditions. In this regard, inappropriate speed selection on Horizontal Curves (HCs) with reduced surface friction can lead to a remarkable rate of run-off-road, sideswipe, head-on, and rollover crashes, especially on rural highways. Aligned with the Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Program on Interstate-80 in Wyoming, this study scrutinizes how CV advisory/warning messages can enhance traffic safety on slippery HCs. To this aim, a roadway consists of two HCs with regular and slippery pavement conditions was designed in a high-fidelity driving simulator experiment. A total of 24 professional truck drivers were recruited to drive the simulated roadway under CV and non-CV environments. In the CV scenario, drivers were informed about the pavement conditions and the advisory speeds before entering HCs. In contrast, no messages were given to non-CV drivers. Truck drivers' behaviors in both scenarios were quantified using four Kinematic-based Surrogate Measures of Safety (K-SMoS), including deviation from the pathway, instantaneous acceleration, lateral speed, and steering angle. CVs’ trajectories were statistically compared to non-CVs in terms of the central tendency and dispersion using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test (WSRT) and Median Absolute Deviation (MAD), respectively. The results of WSRT depicted, under the effect of CV advisory/warning messages and throughout the slippery HC, the central tendency of four K-SMoS could be shifted toward zero by 23% up to 99%. This shifting is associated with a significant safety enhancement that potentially can reduce the likelihood of curve-related crashes on slippery HCs. It was revealed that the variation in drivers’ behavior on the slippery HC could be minimized in the CV environment, where 54% up to 95% reduction in the dispersions of four K-SMoS were observed, leading to more certainty in drivers’ behavior.     

One of the troubles with outcome measures: Lost in translation

This paper presents the concerns of a client diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder about completing outcome measures. He was asked to complete CORE‐10 each time he attended a therapy session with the first author. This paper takes an epistemological position of co‐production, and written in response to the client's concerns, but this is limited by the client's wish and capacity to be involved in the writing up of this article. Implications of his experiences are drawn out for both clients with this diagnosis and more generally for all clients. Recommendations are made to recognise the limitations of measures and how to use outcome measures with more validity.     

Challenges to addressing student mental health in embedded counselling services: a survey of UK higher and further education institutions

With reports continually demonstrating increased demand and severity of student mental health needs, it is important to gain a fuller understanding of the impact on embedded student counselling services. The aims of this research were to identify (a) service similarities, (b) factors which impact on services, (c) characteristics of service users, and (d) the use of therapeutic technology (e.g. online self-help). An online survey was completed by 113 heads of UK student counselling services across Higher Education (HE), Further Education (FE), and Sixth Form Colleges (SFCs), to capture service data from the academic year 2013/14. Students predominantly received high-intensity support (e.g. counselling) and referrals increased over 3 years. Challenges to embedded counselling services and their implications for development are discussed.     

Gender differences in implicit gender self‐categorization lead to stronger gender self‐stereotyping by women than by men

It was hypothesized that, in natural group contexts, low‐status in‐group membership would be highly accessible, whereas membership to high‐status groups would not. Therefore, gender group membership was predicted to be more accessible for women than for men. It was further hypothesized that the high accessibility of gender group membership would lead to stronger self‐stereotyping for women than for men. To measure the accessibility of gender group membership, participants performed a Gender Self‐Categorization Implicit Association Test (Studies 1 and 2), measuring the strength of automatic associations between the self and the gender in‐group. Participants also performed a Self‐Stereotyping Implicit Association Test (Study 2), assessing the strength of automatic associations between the self and the stereotypical traits of the in‐group. As expected, implicit gender self‐categorization and implicit gender self‐stereotyping were stronger for women than for men. Importantly, implicit gender self‐categorization mediated the relation between gender and self‐stereotyping. Therefore, implicit gender self‐categorization was the mechanism underlying stronger implicit self‐stereotyping by women. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measurement issues in health-related quality of life: Challenges for health psychology

Abstract

Quality of life assessment is a central element of clinical trials and related forms of evaluative research. Early efforts to establish appropriate methods of measuring quality of life drew on psychometric principles and emphasised the need for validated measures. However, it is increasingly clear that, whilst still a central requirement of quality of life measures, validity needs to be emphasised alongside a number of other essential properties that have become clearer as the field has developed. Moreover formal psychometric methodology has to be adapted to take account of the specific needs of evaluative research. Research is beginning to develop more appropriate methods of outcome assessment in this area. Further lines of research are suggested to examine psychometric with other approaches to measurement of health-related quality of life.     

Convergent,Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of the Pictorial Attitude Implicit Association Test and the Picture Story Exercise as Measures of the Implicit Power Motive

The Pictorial Attitude Implicit Association Test (PA‐IAT) has recently been proposed as new measure of implicit motives. We report a study that provides the first evidence for the convergent validity of the PA‐IAT by showing that the PA‐IAT correlates significantly with a standard measure of implicit motives [i.e. the Picture Story Exercise (PSE)]. Discriminant validity of the PA‐IAT was verified in the sense that the PA‐IAT shared virtually no common variance with explicit motive measures. Our analyses revealed that the PA‐IAT and PSE can best be conceived as related but distinct measures. We further showed that the PA‐IAT had incremental validity in predicting performance on a memory recall task over and above the PSE. In general, our results confirm that the PA‐IAT is a valid measure of implicit motives and can serve as valid alternative to the PSE. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contingency learning and stereotype formation: Illusory and spurious correlations revisited

The ability of implicit measures to predict behaviour varies greatly across studies, emphasising the need for accounts of this variability. In order to organise and review the literature on moderators that influence individuals' information processing, we suggest a classification system of moderators with two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes moderators according to their influence on the opportunity to control, the motivation to control, or the reliance on either automatic or controlled processes without changes in opportunity or motivation. The second dimension classifies moderators according to whether they pertain to a disposition of the acting person, the situation in which the behaviour occurs, or the behaviour itself. Increased predictive validity of implicit measures is associated with conditions that foster the impact of automatic processes on behaviour determination. In the discussion we derive several additional moderators from the classification system, delineate emerging research questions, and discuss implications of the reviewed studies for research on self-regulation.     

Demand Characteristics and Self-Report Measures of Imaginary Audience Sensitivity: Implications for Interpreting Age Differences in Adolescent Egocentrism

Self-consciousness during early adolescence has been explained as an outcome of adolescent egocentrism, in which adolescents create an imaginary audience (IA) of attentive, critical peers. The possibility that such self-consciousness might result from contact with peers who are more attentive and critical than those encountered during childhood or adulthood has not been considered. Study I tested whether young adults, who are not theoretically susceptible to IA, could be made to receive high scores on IA and self-consciousness measures by having them complete a procedure in 1 of 3 laboratory conditions—a critical audience, a noncritical audience, or no audience. However, participants in the critical-audience condition received significantly lower IA and self-consciousness scores than participants in the no-audience condition did. Study 2 tested whether the directions given to Study I participants might have been responsible for the unexpected findings. Results indicated that participants instructed to give mature-sounding responses received lower IA/self-consciousness scores than did those asked to report their honest opinions. Together, the results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that survey measures of IA are subject to demand characteristics and highlighted the need to interpret with caution age differences in IA as traditionally assessed.     

What COP and Kinematic Parameters Better Characterize Postural Control in Standing Balance Tasks?

The authors’ aim was to determine which variables allow for the characterization of motor balance behavior. Traditional measures and nonlinear measures of center of pressure (COP; n = 30) and kinematics (n = 10) were tested in their absolute and relative consistency in a 30-s standing balance task protocol under stable and unstable conditions. Regarding COP variables, mean velocity (mVel), permutation entropy (PE) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) exhibited high consistency between trials and ranked individuals more accurately compare with other metrics. In the kinematic signal mVel, PE and DFA had good intrasession reliability values in unstable conditions. Overall, the intrasession reliability values were better in the unstable condition than in the stable condition and the measures calculated using derived data had better intrasession reliability values. In conclusion, mVel, PE, and DFA allow for the good characterization of motor balance behavior in a simplified protocol where velocity time series are analyzed.