Risk perception and travel satisfaction associated with the use of public transport in the time of COVID-19. The case of Turin, Italy.

The present study examined the association between risk perception and travel satisfaction related to the use of public transport (PT) during COVID-19 pandemic in Turin, Italy. A total of 448 PT users took part in an online survey conducted from January to March 2021. It investigated safety and risk perception related to the use of PT, and the users' subjective experience, measured through the Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS). These perceptions were compared for three time scenarios: before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and in the future at the end of the pandemic emergency. Results showed that COVID-19 influenced respondents risk perception both during the pandemic and in their projections about the future, especially for females. The risk of contagion from COVID-19 is perceived as higher inside a PT vehicle than in the adjacent/waiting spaces. Regarding travel satisfaction, the overall scores of the STS indicated that the pandemic has impacted reported well-being while travelling, both now and in the future. The dimension of activation shifted towards the negative pole and did not indicate a return to risk perception before the pandemic levels at the end of the crisis (especially for females). Respondents reported a significant decrease in their level of pleasure and satisfaction during the pandemic, but expect that in the future these levels will go back to the levels previously experienced. Regarding travel satisfaction, PT users aged 36 to 50 years reported the highest level of satisfaction, while younger users (18 to 35 years) reported the lowest degree of satisfaction in all three time scenarios. Overall, the results clearly pinpoint that health-related perceived risk is becoming a key determinant for PT use. Within this context, different dimensions of travel satisfaction proved to be impacted differently by the pandemic, for both current and future scenarios.

How to assess abstract conceptual knowledge: construction, standardization and validation of a new battery of semantic memory tests.

The neuropsychological investigation of semantic memory has mainly focused on concrete concepts, while abstract concepts have been relatively neglected. We describe a new battery for assessing abstract concepts in brain-damaged patients. The battery includes three different tests: an association task, a multiplechoice naming-to-description task and a sentence completion task. The three tasks are based on the same 40 stimuli belonging to different categories of abstract concepts and they are tightly controlled for variables that can account for quantitative differences between abstract concepts (i.e. concreteness, imageability, context availability, familiarity, age of acquisition, mode of acquisition, emotional valence and arousal). The three tasks showed high reliability. Normative data were collected from 108 healthy Italian adults. To assess its sensitivity, the battery was administered to 13 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease who performed worse than matched controls. Significant correlations were also found between the tests and other semantic memory tests, supporting the validity of the battery.