Patterns of Walking Among Employed,Urban Canadians: Variations by Commuting Mode,Time of Day,and Days of the Week

This paper illustrates the facility of time-use files to enhance the understanding of behavioral components of commuting. It draws on data from Statistics Canada’s most recent national General Social Survey (2010) to substantiate prior research on the extent that use of public transit for commuting to work is accompanied in people’s days by a greater amount of walking. By verifying alternative explanations for this relationship, the paper explores more thoroughly how walking fits into the daily lives of employed persons in large urban areas. Results show that travel by car comprises upwards of 80 per cent of trips regardless of the hour of the day, while public transportation is used mostly to get to and from paid work. Although walking generally accompanies such transit commutes and is shown to fit sequentially into transit’s temporal patterns, walking spreads out more evenly across the day than transit use and helps complete other trip purposes. The weekday walking pattern extends to weekend days to a surprisingly similar extent, confirming that transit is but one of numerous generators of walking trips. Statistically significant relationships link minutes walked to household income, access to a car, and main mode used for commuting. However, the pre-eminence of commuting by car raises questions about the effective priorities and constraints underlying choice of main commuting mode. More detailed characterization of transit access and subjective questions in time-use surveys could facilitate greater insight into the rationales of the subgroup choosing public transit and walking more frequently and for longer duration.     

From the stage to the laboratory: magicians, psychologists, and the science of illusion

In 1894, French psychologist Alfred Binet published an article on the psychology of conjuring. By observing five magicians perform in his laboratory, he was hoping to gain a better understanding of the psychological processes responsible for inducing illusions in an audience. This article focuses on the subjects of these experiments and their world. It attempts to explain why five men belonging to a profession in which secrecy was vital agreed to enter the laboratory and reveal their tricks. It argues that magicians saw themselves as men of science and that, by entering Binet's laboratory, they were responding to an opportunity to participate in a world to which they wished to belong.     

Attempting science: the creation and early development of the Institut métapsychique international in Paris, 1919-1931

In 1919, the Institut métapsychique international (IMI) held its first meeting in Paris. With their choice of a name, the founders made their intentions clear. By using the term métapsychique rather than the more common sciences psychiques, they indicated a departure from previous enterprises of such kind in France. By attaching the label international to it, they signified that this orientation was to affect not just French research on psychical phenomena, but that of the whole community. This article tells the story of the first 12 years of the IMI in its attempts to impose a program of research and to incorporate psychical phenomena into the scientific corpus in particular ways. The article ends in 1931 with a spectacular attempt by members of the IMI to dominate the international psychical research community. The failures of the IMI, both with psychical researchers and the scientific community in general, are explained here in terms of characteristics of the institute and the field itself.     

Information Privacy for Technology Users With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Why Does It Matter?

This article aims to explore the attitudes and behaviors of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) related to their information privacy when using information technology (IT). Six persons with IDD were recruited to participate to a series of 3 semistructured focus groups. Data were analyzed following a hybrid thematic analysis approach. Only 2 participants reported using IT every day. However, they all perceived IT use benefits, such as an increased autonomy. Participants demonstrated awareness of privacy concerns, but not in situations involving the use of technology; their awareness is not transferred to the abstract context of IT use. Privacy breaches were revealed to be a major risk for persons with IDD, who did not seem to understand how their personal information was used. Most protection mechanisms and tools reported were those suggested and implemented by caregivers and close relatives who had a great influence on the participants’ attitudes and behaviors toward IT and privacy. Our findings suggest that when using IT, persons with IDD often experience the consequences of a trade-off between autonomy and privacy. Further research and action is needed to support persons with IDD to understand and balance the benefits of IT use and the inherent threats to information privacy.