Lighting a Path for Autonomous Vehicle Communication: The Effect of Light Projection on the Detection of Reversing Vehicles by Older Adult Pedestrians.

Pedestrian understanding of driver intent is key to pedestrian safety on the road and in parking lots. With the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the human driver will be removed, and with it, the exchange that occurs between drivers and pedestrians (e.g., head nods, hand gestures). One possible solution for augmenting that communication is an array of high-intensity light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to project vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) messages on the ground plane behind a reversing vehicle. This would be particularly beneficial to elderly pedestrians, who are at particular risk of being struck by reversing cars in parking lots. Their downward gaze and slower reaction time make them particularly vulnerable. A survey was conducted to generate designs, and a simulator experiment was conducted to measure detection and reaction times. The study found that elderly pedestrians are significantly more likely to detect an additional projected message on the ground than detect the existing brake light alone when walking in a parking lot.

Social Media and Couples: What Are the Important Factors for Understanding Relationship Satisfaction?

The current study sought to examine specific Facebook behaviors, related to one's relationship and their association with relationship satisfaction. Data were collected from 115 undergraduates who were in a relationship and had an active Facebook account. Participants completed a number of measures focused on their relationship and gave the researcher access to their Facebook profiles to record the frequency of all posts (comments and status updates), pictures, tags, and likes from the previous two weeks. Each of these behaviors was then coded as relationship-specific (involving one's partner) or not. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each relationship-specific Facebook behavior. A number of participants did not include relationship information on their Facebook page. Only relationship status and having one's partner in a profile picture were significantly associated with relationship satisfaction. The current study is the first of its kind to examine the association between relationship-specific Facebook behaviors and relationship satisfaction, beyond that of one's relationship status or profile photo alone. The results of this study provide an initial glimpse into the specific relationship-oriented behaviors that individuals engage in on social media. Furthermore, the results provide guidance on macro- versus micro-analysis of online behavior for other researchers who are examining social media and couples' relationships.

A longitudinal examination of male college students' perpetration of sexual assault.

Self-administered surveys were completed by 197 men in college at 2 time points, 1 year apart. Men who committed sexual assault at multiple time points (repeat assaulters) had the most extreme scores on measures of hostility toward women, past sexual experiences, drinking in sexual situations, and adolescent delinquency. Nonassaulters had the least extreme scores and men who committed sexual assault at only 1 time point had scores that tended to fall in between. Repeat assaulters also expressed significantly less remorse when they described their sexual assault at Time 1 than did past assaulters who committed sexual assault only at the initial time point. These findings demonstrate the importance of initiating prevention and treatment programs in early adolescence, before longstanding attitudes and behaviors tolerant of sexual assault are established.

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN WOMEN'S SEXUAL ASSAULT EXPERIENCES BASED ON TACTICS USED BY THE PERPETRATOR.

Only a few studies have examined the characteristics of sexual assault based on the tactics used by the perpetrator. In this study we compared the experiences of women who were forced to engage in vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse due to verbal coercion, physical force, or intoxication. Random-digit dialing was used to obtain a sample of 272 single African American and Caucasian women between the ages of 18 and 49 from the Detroit metropolitan area. Participants completed a computer-assisted self-interview that asked detailed questions about a past sexual assault and their reactions to it. Among the 139 women who were forced to engage in vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse, sexual assaults that involved physical force produced the most severe negative outcomes. Situations that involved the woman being too intoxicated to resist differed from others primarily in terms of how much alcohol the man and woman consumed. Although all types of sexual assault were perceived as being at least moderately serious, verbally coerced assaults were on average perceived as being least serious. These findings suggest that the perpetrators' tactics affect women's responses to sexual assault.

Sexual assault and alcohol consumption: what do we know about their relationship and what types of research are still needed?

Approximately half of all sexual assaults are associated with either the perpetrator's alcohol consumption, the victim's alcohol consumption, or both. Although the emphasis of this review is on alcohol-involved sexual assaults, their unique aspects can only be evaluated by comparing them to other types of sexual assault. Theoretical perspectives on sexual assault that focus on characteristics of the perpetrator, the victim, and the situation are described. A number of personality traits, attitudes, and past experiences have been systematically linked to sexual assault perpetration, including beliefs about alcohol and heavy drinking. In contrast, only a few experiences have been significantly related to sexual assault victimization, including childhood sexual abuse and heavy drinking. There is support for both psychological and pharmacological mechanisms linking alcohol and sexual assault. Beliefs about alcohol's effects reinforce stereotypes about gender roles and can exacerbate their influence on perpetrators' actions. Alcohol's effects on cognitive and motor skills also contribute to sexual assault through their effects on perpetrators' and victims' ability to process and react to each other's verbal and nonverbal behavior. Limitations with existing research and methodological challenges associated with conducting research on this topic are described. Suggestions are made for future research which can inform prevention and treatment programs.

The relationship between the quantity of alcohol consumed and the severity of sexual assaults committed by college men.

Researchers have suggested that intoxicated perpetrators may act more violently than other perpetrators, although empirical findings have been mixed. Past research has focused on whether or not alcohol was consumed, rather than the quantity consumed, and this may explain these inconsistent findings. The authors hypothesized that the quantity of alcohol consumed would have a curvilinear relationship to the severity of the assault. Data were collected from 113 college men who reported that they had committed a sexual assault since the age of 14. The quantity of alcohol that perpetrators consumed during the assault was linearly related to how much aggression they used and was curvilinearly related to the type of sexual assault committed. The quantity of alcohol that victims consumed during the assault was linearly related to the type of sexual assault committed. Strategies for improving assessment of alcohol consumption in sexual assault research are discussed.

How does alcohol contribute to sexual assault? Explanations from laboratory and survey data.

This article summarizes the proceedings of a symposium of the 2001 RSA Meeting in Montreal, Canada. The chair was Antonia Abbey and the organizers were Tina Zawacki and Philip O. Buck. There were four presentations and a discussant. The first presentation was made by Maria Testa whose interviews with sexual assault victims suggest that there may be differences in the characteristics of sexual assaults in which both the victim and perpetrator were using substances as compared to when only the perpetrator was using substances. The second presentation was made by Tina Zawacki whose research found that perpetrators of sexual assaults that involved alcohol were in most ways similar to perpetrators of sexual assaults that did not involve alcohol, although they differed on impulsivity and several alcohol measures. The third presentation was made by Kathleen Parks who described how alcohol consumption affected women's responses to a male confederate's behavior in a simulated bar setting. The fourth presentation was made by Jeanette Norris who found that alcohol and expectancies affected men's self-reported likelihood of acting like a hypothetical sexually aggressive man. Susan E. Martin discussed the implications of these studies and made suggestions for future research.

ALCOHOL-INVOLVED RAPES: ARE THEY MORE VIOLENT?

Alcohol's psychological, cognitive, and motor effects contribute to rape. Based on theory and past research, we hypothesized that there would be a curvilinear relationship between the quantity of alcohol consumed by perpetrators and how aggressively they behaved. Moderate levels of intoxication encourage aggressiveness; however, extreme levels severely inhibit cognitive and motor capacity. We also hypothesized that victims' alcohol consumption would have a curvilinear relationship to their resistance. These hypotheses were examined with data from 132 college women who had been the victims of attempted or completed rape. Although there was a curvilinear result for perpetrators, the slope of the curve suggested that aggressiveness was worst when no alcohol or the highest levels of alcohol were consumed. There was a negative linear relationship between victims' alcohol consumption and resistance. Difficulties associated with accurately assessing degree of intoxication from survey data are discussed and suggestions are made for improving alcohol measurement in rape research.

Attitudinal, Experiential, and Situational Predictors of Sexual Assault Perpetration.

Past research demonstrates that sexual assault perpetration is caused by multiple factors including attitudes, early experiences, and situational factors. In this study, 343 college men described either a sexual assault they had committed or their worst date. Discriminant function analysis indicated that attitudes about gender roles and alcohol, number of consensual sex partners, how well the man knew the woman, how isolated the setting was, alcohol consumption during the event, the man's misperception of the woman's cues during the event, and prior consensual sexual activity between the man and the woman discriminated between sexual assaults and worst dates. Additionally, tactics used to obtain sex, self attributions, the perceived seriousness of the assault, and the extent to which it disrupted relationships with others significantly discriminated between men who committed forced sexual contact, sexual coercion, and rape. These results demonstrate the importance of considering both individual characteristics and situational factors in theories and prevention activities.