The leading role of personality in concerns about autonomous vehicles.

Development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is growing in a rapid rate, however, the most dominant barriers in their adoption seem to be rather psychological than technical. The present online survey study aimed to investigate which demographical and personality dimensions predict attitudes towards AVs on a Hungarian sample (N = 328). Data was collected by convenience and snowball sampling. Three-level hierarchical regression models were applied: in the first level, demographical variables, then general personality traits and third, attitude-like personality factors were entered. We demonstrated that the predictive effect of age, gender and education disappeared when personality dimensions were included into the models. Importantly, more positive general attitudes towards technology and higher optimism regarding innovations predicted eagerness to adopt AVs. On the other hand, individuals with more negative attitudes and higher dependence on technology as well as those with lower level of Sensory Sensation Seeking and higher level of Conscientiousness were more concerned about AVs. Our results suggest that AV acceptance cannot be regarded as a one-dimensional construct and that certain personality traits might be stronger predictors of AV acceptance than demographical factors.

Physiological measurements in social acceptance of self driving technologies.

The goal of the present study is to examine the cognitive/affective physiological correlates of passenger travel experience in autonomously driven transportation systems. We investigated the social acceptance and cognitive aspects of self-driving technology by measuring physiological responses in real-world experimental settings using eye-tracking and EEG measures simultaneously on 38 volunteers. A typical test run included human-driven (Human) and Autonomous conditions in the same vehicle, in a safe environment. In the spectrum analysis of the eye-tracking data we found significant differences in the complex patterns of eye movements: the structure of movements of different magnitudes were less variable in the Autonomous drive condition. EEG data revealed less positive affectivity in the Autonomous condition compared to the human-driven condition while arousal did not differ between the two conditions. These preliminary findings reinforced our initial hypothesis that passenger experience in human and machine navigated conditions entail different physiological and psychological correlates, and those differences are accessible using state of the art in-world measurements. These useful dimensions of passenger experience may serve as a source of information both for the improvement and design of self-navigating technology and for market-related concerns.

Haptic perceptual intent in quiet standing affects multifractal scaling of postural fluctuations.

Research on dynamic touch has shown that when a rod strapped to the shoulders is wielded via axial rotations, flexions-extensions, and lateral bending of the trunk, participants can selectively perceive whole rod length and partial rod length (e.g., a leftward segment) with precision comparable to wielding by hand (Palatinus, Carello & Turvey, 2011). The present research addressed whether this haptic ability is preserved in quiet standing, when postural control is limited to center of pressure (COP) fluctuations at the mm/ms scale, and, if so, whether the intentions ("perceive partial," "perceive whole") are distinguishable within the fluctuations. Given standard manipulations of rod length and attached mass, participants provided significantly distinct, appropriately scaled, whole and partial estimates of rod length. COP displacement time series were subjected to multifractal, detrended fluctuation analysis. The resultant spectrum of fractal scaling exponents for gradually different-sized fluctuations revealed that "perceive partial" was manifest as larger exponents for progressively smaller fluctuations than "perceive whole." Our results indicate (a) that the significant mechanical variables for haptically perceiving object extent are available in the small scale of normal body sway, and (b) that these seemingly "passive" movements reflect the intention of the perceiver.

Fractal fluctuations in quiet standing predict the use of mechanical information for haptic perception.

Movement science has traditionally understood high-dimensional fluctuations as either antithetical or irrelevant to low-dimensional control. However, fluctuations incident to changeful, sometimes unpredictable stimulation must somehow reshape low-dimensional aspects of control through perception. The movement system's fluctuations may reflect cascade dynamics in which many-sized events interact nonlinearly across many scales. Cascades yield fractal fluctuations, and fractality of fluctuations may provide a window on the interactions across scale supporting perceptual processes. To test these ideas, we asked adult human participants to judge whole or partial length for unseen rods (with and without added masses). The participants' only experience with the objects came from supporting them across their shoulders during quiet standing. First, the degree of fractal temporal correlations in trial-by-trial series of planar Euclidean displacements in center of pressure (COP) significantly improved prediction of subsequent trial-by-trial judgments, above and beyond prediction by traditional predictors of haptic perception and conventional measures of COP variability. Second, comparison with linear surrogate data indicated the presence of nonlinear interactions across scale in these time series. These results demonstrate that high-dimensional fluctuations may serve a crucial role in the cascade dynamics supporting apparently low-dimensional control strategies.

Principles of part-whole selective perception by dynamic touch extend to the torso.

The haptic subsystem of dynamic touch expresses a novel form of part-whole selective perception. When wielding a nonvisible rod grasped at some intermediate point along its length, an individual can attend to and report the length of a part of the rod (e.g., the segment forward of the hand) or the length of the whole rod. Both perceptions relate to the rod's mass moments about the point of grasp but in systematically different ways. Previous demonstrations of this part-whole selectivity have been in respect to rods grasped by hand or attached to a foot. The authors demonstrated the part-whole selectivity for nonvisible rods attached to the shoulder girdle and wielded primarily by movements of the trunk with benchmark performance provided by the same rods grasped and wielded by hand. Their results suggest that part-whole selectivity is a haptic capability general to the body.