Supervising the self-driving car: Situation awareness and fatigue during highly automated driving.

Vehicle automation promises to reduce the demands of the driving task, making driving less fatiguing, more convenient, and safer. Nevertheless, Level 3 automated vehicles rely on a human driver to be ready to resume control, requiring the driver to reconstruct situation awareness (SA) and resume the driving task. Understanding the interaction between non-driving-related task (NDRT) use, SA, and takeover capacity is important because an effective takeover is entirely dependent on, and scaffolds from, effectively reconstructed SA. While a number of studies have looked at the behavioural impact of being 'in- or on-the-loop', fewer consider the cognitive impact, particularly the consequences for SA. The present study exposed participants to an extended simulated automated drive involving two critical takeover scenarios (early- and late-drive). We compared automated vehicle (AV) operators who were required to passively monitor the vehicle to those engaging with self-selected NDRTs. Monitoring operators demonstrated lower total- and schema-specific SA count scores following a fatiguing drive compared to those engaging with self-selected NDRTs. NDRT engagement resulted in no significant difference in SA count scores early- and late-drive. Assessment of differences in the type and sensory modality of NDRTs indicated operators make fundamentally different selections about the NDRTs they engage with in an automated driving environment compared to a manual environment. The present study provides further evidence linking SA and AV operator behaviour and underscores the need to understand the role of SA in takeover capacity. Our findings suggest that although SA declines over time regardless of driving task requirements (Monitoring versus NDRT engagement), NDRT use may facilitate better SA construction, with implications for the regulation of NDRT use in AVs as the technology progresses.

Can degrading information about patient symptoms in vignettes alter clinical reasoning in paramedics and paramedic students? An experimental application of fuzzy trace theory.

BACKGROUND: Research has shown paramedics form rapid intuitive impressions on first, meeting a patient and these impressions subsequently affected their clinical reasoning. We report an experiment where theory-based interventions are developed with the goal of reducing reliance on intuitive reasoning by paramedics and paramedic students in simulated patients. METHOD: Australian paramedics (n = 213; 49% female) and paramedicine students (n = 83; 55% female) attending paramedic conferences completed a 2 × 2 fully between participants experiment. They saw a written clinical vignette designed to be representative of Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) in which key clinical information was precise or degraded (stimulus), they then either chose the single most likely diagnosis from a list, or ranked competing diagnoses (response). Outcome variables were diagnostic rate and response time. RESULTS: There were no differences in the proportion of participants choosing ACS across the four stimulus-response conditions (0.75 [0.65, 0.84] vs 0.79 [0.68, 0.87] vs, 0.78 [0.65, 0.87] vs 0.72 [0.59, 0.82], p = 0.42) CONCLUSION: This is the first study attempting to experimentally examine clinical reasoning in paramedics using a theory-based intervention. Neither of the interventions tested succeeded in altering measures of clinical reasoning. Similar to previous research on physicians, paramedic reasoning appears robust to manipulation.

Fluency and confidence predict paramedic diagnostic intuition: An experimental study of applied dual-process theory.

INTRODUCTION: We report an experiment using Australian paramedics (n = 64) and Australian paramedicine undergraduates (n = 44), on the processes underlying the formation of an intuitive diagnostic impression, based on limited dispatch information. Previous research has signalled roles for objective likelihood of the disease, subjective typicality of the disease, and the ease with which the diagnosis comes to mind (answer fluency) as important in impression formation. METHOD: Participants completed four brief written clinical vignettes under time pressure and with a concurrent navigation task to simulate conditions faced by paramedics prior to meeting a patient. Diagnostic impression, confidence and subjective typicality of the vignette were self-reported while answer fluency was measured. The vignettes varied the objective likelihood of a diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS), a condition often encountered by paramedics. RESULTS: Likelihood, answer fluency, self-reported typicality and confidence predicted the impression but there was no effect of experience. Students and experienced paramedics had comparable accuracy and performance. CONCLUSION: The results support a role for answer fluency and confidence in forming that impression. We have shown it is possible to experimentally manipulate various factors associated with paramedic diagnostic impressions. These experimental methods can form the basis for additional studies into paramedic decision making.

Identifying objective behavioural measures of expert driver situation awareness.

Efforts to reduce road crash rates depend on a clear understanding of the factors that contribute to driver risk. Not all drivers are at equivalent risk. It is critical to identify the factors that contribute to the development of expertise in the driving environment. The rapid development of a driver's situation awareness (SA) is central to the safe performance of the driving task. Therefore, SA must be clearly operationalised in order to better assess its role in the development of expertise. This study employs an existing scheme based on the Perceptual Cycle Model (PCM) used for post hoc incident analysis and adapts it to the driving context. We attempted to correlate performance on coded verbalisations indicative of SA with non-invasive objective gaze metrics. Gaze metrics and the verbal counts were shown to differentiate between both expert and experienced (non-expert) drivers, but these measures failed to correlate with one another. Findings indicate differences in the way expert and experienced drivers update their schema of the driving task, with equivalent effort required to do so. The novel adaptation demonstrated in this paper allows for a domain-specific assessment of SA which reliably differentiates between drivers of varying expertise levels. Although selected gaze metrics were shown to be inadequate predictors of SA, additional analysis demonstrated key differences in gaze content. Combined, these findings enhance an understanding of expert SA development contributing to reduced crash risk.

Identifying Interactive Factors That May Increase Crash Risk between Young Drivers and Trucks: A Narrative Review.

Sharing the road with trucks is associated with increased risk of serious injury and death for passenger vehicle drivers. However, the onus for minimising risk lies not just with truck drivers; other drivers must understand the unique performance limitations of trucks associated with stopping distances, blind spots, and turning manoeuverability, so they can suitably act and react around trucks. Given the paucity of research aimed at understanding the specific crash risk vulnerability of young drivers around trucks, the authors employ a narrative review methodology that brings together evidence from both truck and young driver road safety research domains, as well as data regarding known crash risks for each driving cohort, to gain a comprehensive understanding of what young drivers are likely to know about heavy vehicle performance limitations, where there may be gaps in their understanding, and how this could potentially increase crash risk. We then review literature regarding the human factors affecting young drivers to understand how perceptual immaturity and engagement in risky driving behaviours are likely to compound risk regarding both the frequency and severity of collision between trucks and young drivers. Finally, we review current targeted educational initiatives and suggest that simply raising awareness of truck limitations is insufficient. We propose that further research is needed to ensure initiatives aimed at increasing young driver awareness of trucks and truck safety are evidence-based, undergo rigorous evaluation, and are delivered in a way that aims to (i) increase young driver risk perception skills, and (ii) reduce risky driving behaviour around trucks.

Keeping Safe on Australian Roads: Overview of Key Determinants of Risky Driving, Passenger Injury, and Fatalities for Indigenous Populations.

Social and cultural barriers associated with inequitable access to driver licensing and associated road safety education, as well as socioeconomic issues that preclude ongoing vehicle maintenance and registration, result in unsafe in-car behaviours such as passenger overcrowding. This in turn is associated with improper seatbelt usage, noncompliance with child restraint mandates, and driver distraction. For example, in Australia, where seatbelt use is mandatory, Indigenous road users are three times less likely to wear seatbelts than non-Indigenous road users. This is associated with a disproportionately high fatality rate for Indigenous drivers and passengers; 21% of Indigenous motor-vehicle occupants killed on Australian roads were not wearing a seatbelt at the time of impact. In addition, inequitable access to driver licensing instruction due to financial and cultural barriers results in Indigenous learner drivers having limited access to qualified mentors and instructors. A consequent lack of road safety instruction results in a normalising of risky driving behaviours, perpetuated through successive generations of drivers. Moreover, culturally biased driver instruction manuals, which are contextualised within an English written-language learning framework, fail to accommodate the learning needs of Indigenous peoples who may encounter difficulties with English literacy. This results in difficulty understanding the fundamental road rules, which in turn makes it difficult for young drivers to develop and sustain safe in-car behaviours. This paper considers the literature regarding road safety for Indigenous road users and critically evaluates strategies and policies that have been advanced to protect Indigenous drivers. Novel solutions to increasing road safety rule compliance are proposed, particularly in relation to passenger safety, which are uniquely embedded within Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. Safe driving practices have crucial health and social implications for Indigenous communities by allowing more Indigenous people to participate in work and education opportunities, access healthcare, maintain cultural commitments, and engage with families and friends, qualities which are essential for ongoing health and wellbeing.

Pre-stimulus alpha predicts inattentional blindness.

Pre- and post-stimulus oscillatory activity between 8 and 12 hertz, referred to as the alpha-band, correlates with conscious visual awareness of stimuli across a variety of psychophysical tasks. Within an EEG-adapted inattentional blindness task, the current study sought to examine whether this relationship holds for conscious awareness of stimuli under conditions of inattentional blindness. Noticing rates of the task-irrelevant unexpected stimulus were correlated with a significant decrease in alpha power over bilateral parietal-occipital areas during the pre-stimulus interval, and a significant decrease in alpha power over parietal-occipital regions in the right hemisphere during the post-stimulus interval. Findings are taken to imply alpha-band neural activity represents a valid correlate of consciousness that is not confounded by task relevancy or the need for report.

A Temporal Sampling Basis for Visual Processing in Developmental Dyslexia.

Knowledge of oscillatory entrainment and its fundamental role in cognitive and behavioral processing has increasingly been applied to research in the field of reading and developmental dyslexia. Growing evidence indicates that oscillatory entrainment to theta frequency spoken language in the auditory domain, along with cross-frequency theta-gamma coupling, support phonological processing (i.e., cognitive encoding of linguistic knowledge gathered from speech) which is required for reading. This theory is called the temporal sampling framework (TSF) and can extend to developmental dyslexia, such that inadequate temporal sampling of speech-sounds in people with dyslexia results in poor theta oscillatory entrainment in the auditory domain, and thus a phonological processing deficit which hinders reading ability. We suggest that inadequate theta oscillations in the visual domain might account for the many magno-dorsal processing, oculomotor control and visual deficits seen in developmental dyslexia. We propose two possible models of a magno-dorsal visual correlate to the auditory TSF: (1) A direct correlate that involves "bottom-up" magnocellular oscillatory entrainment of the visual domain that occurs when magnocellular populations phase lock to theta frequency fixations during reading and (2) an inverse correlate whereby attending to text triggers "top-down" low gamma signals from higher-order visual processing areas, thereby organizing magnocellular populations to synchronize to a theta frequency to drive the temporal control of oculomotor movements and capturing of letter images at a higher frequency.

tACS Stimulation at Alpha Frequency Selectively Induces Inattentional Blindness.

Contemporary neurocognitive models implicate alpha oscillations as a top-down mechanism of cortical inhibition, instrumental in the suppression of information that fails to reach conscious visual awareness. This suggests that alpha-band activity may play a key role in the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, however this has not yet been empirically examined. The current study employed transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over occipital cortex at alpha, theta, and sham frequencies within an inattentional blindness task to delineate whether an exogenous manipulation of alpha oscillations has a modulatory effect on visual awareness of the unexpected stimulus. Results revealed that compared to theta and sham, those exposed to alpha tACS were more likely to be inattentionally blind to the unexpected stimulus. Findings extend current theoretical views of alpha by suggesting inattentional blindness may be explained as a suppression of irrelevant information via alpha-band.

Tablet computer games to measure dorsal stream performance in good and poor readers.

Evidence suggests a link between deficits in visuo-spatial attention, and subsequent reading ability. However, all the research in the area thus far has been conducted using traditional, lab-based psychophysics, with very tightly controlled visual parameters. In order to take this research further, such as using visuo-spatial tasks for remediation purposes, it must be established that such tasks can be taken out of the laboratory, 'gamified', and still predict reading ability. This study aimed to determine if subtle visual deficits in poor readers could be detected outside a traditional laboratory, in relatively uncontrolled settings using portable game-like technology. Classic visual search and change detection programs, thought to rely on the visual dorsal stream, were modified to a game-like format. They were administered on a portable computer tablet within the participants' school setting. Whilst IQ predicted reading rate, visuo-spatial tasks such as visual search speed, and change detection, each accounted for unique variance in reading rate over and above IQ, age and phonological ability. These results are consistent with the visuo-spatial attention deficit hypothesis, and provide support for the development of portable computerised games that may assess and potentially target this deficit in poor readers.

It is the egg, not the chicken; dorsal visual deficits present in dyslexia are not present in illiterate adults.

Some individuals with dyslexia demonstrate deficits in reading, visual attention, and visual processing which can be attributed to a functional failure of the magnocells in the visual system or in the dorsal visual pathway. The study examines the role of magno/dorsal function in dyslexic adults compared with normal, illiterate, and semi-literate readers. Coherent motion and coherent form were used in Experiment 1, and the frequency doubling illusion and static-gratings were used in Experiment 2. If a magno/dorsal deficit is demonstrated for dyslexic readers but not illiterate, semi-literate, and normal reading adults, then the deficit cannot be attributed to reading experience. Illiterate adults performed the same as normal and semi-literate readers in coherent motion and frequency doubling tasks, and all three groups performed better than the dyslexic readers. There was no difference between any of the groups in the coherent form or static grating tasks. Together, these studies show that illiterate and semi-literate adults do not demonstrate a magno/dorsal deficit that is a characteristic of some sufferers of dyslexia. Therefore, magno/dorsal deficits in dyslexia are unlikely to be a consequence of failing to learn to read but rather provides evidence to suggest a causal role for reduced visual magno/dorsal processing.

The Impact of Concurrent Noise on Visual Search in Children With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a concurrent "white noise" stimulus on selective attention in children with ADHD. METHOD: Participants were 33 children aged 7 to 14 years, who had been previously diagnosed with ADHD. All children completed a computer-based conjunction search task under two noise conditions: a classroom noise condition and a classroom noise + white noise condition. The white noise stimulus was sounds of rain, administered using an iPhone application called Sleep Machine. RESULTS: There were no overall differences between conditions for target detection accuracy, mean reaction time (RT), or reaction time variability ( SD). The impact of white noise on visual search depended on children's medication status. CONCLUSION: White noise may improve task engagement for non-medicated children. White noise may be beneficial for task performance when used as an adjunct to medication.

Allocating Attention to Detect Motorcycles: The Role of Inattentional Blindness.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether inattentional blindness (IB) can be used to understand the psychological mechanisms around looked-but-failed-to-see (LBFTS) crashes involving motorcycles Background: IB occurs when an observer looks directly at an object yet fails to see it, thus LBFTS crashes may be a real-world example of IB. The study tests a perceptual cycle model in which motorcycles are detected less frequently because they fall lower on the attentional hierarchy for driving. METHOD: A driving-related IB task with photographs of driving situations investigated whether an additional stimulus, a taxi or motorcycle, would be more likely to be missed by participants. In Experiments 2 and 3, the "threat value" of objects in the scene were varied to determine the degree to which this influences participants' tendency to notice motorcycles. RESULTS: Participants were twice as likely to miss a motorcycle compared with a taxi. Moreover, participants reported that they would expect to miss a motorcycle on the road. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants modulated their attention to accommodate motorcycles when necessary, suggesting that motorcycles are afforded the lowest level of attentional bandwidth. CONCLUSION: Inattentional blindness forms a good psychological framework for understanding LBFTS crashes, particularly in the context of attentional set, such that LBFTS crashes occur because motorcycles do not feature strongly in a typical driver's attentional set for driving. APPLICATION: The findings here are important because LBFTS crashes can be reduced if we can change the expectations of road users around the presence of motorcycles on the road.

Brain mechanisms and reading remediation: more questions than answers.

Dyslexia is generally diagnosed in childhood and is characterised by poor literacy skills with associated phonological and perceptual problems. Compensated dyslexic readers are adult readers who have a documented history of childhood dyslexia but as adults can read and comprehend written text well. Uncompensated dyslexic readers are adults who similarly have a documented history of reading impairment but remain functionally reading-impaired all their lives. There is little understanding of the neurophysiological basis for how or why some children become compensated, while others do not, and there is little knowledge about neurophysiological changes that occur with remedial programs for reading disability. This paper will review research looking at reading remediation, particularly in the context of the underlying neurophysiology.

Impulsivity and related neuropsychological features in regular and addictive first person shooter gaming.

Putative cyber addictions are of significant interest. There remains little experimental research into excessive use of first person shooter (FPS) games, despite their global popularity. Moreover, the role between excessive gaming and impulsivity remains unclear, with previous research showing conflicting findings. The current study investigated performances on a number of neuropsychological tasks (go/no-go, continuous performance task, Iowa gambling task) and a trait measure of impulsivity for a group of regular FPS gamers (n=25), addicted FPS gamers (n=22), and controls (n=22). Gamers were classified using the Addiction-Engagement Questionnaire. Addicted FPS gamers had significantly higher levels of trait impulsivity on the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale compared to controls. Addicted FPS gamers also had significantly higher levels of disinhibition in a go/no-go task and inattention in a continuous performance task compared to controls, whereas the regular FPS gamers had better decision making on the Iowa gambling task compared to controls. The results indicate impulsivity is associated with FPS gaming addiction, comparable to pathological gambling. The relationship between impulsivity and excessive gaming may be unique to the FPS genre. Furthermore, regular FPS gaming may improve decision making ability.

Physiological arousal deficits in addicted gamers differ based on preferred game genre.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: There has been significant discussion surrounding the psychopathology of excessive gaming and whether it constitutes an addiction. The current study investigated physiological and subjective levels of arousal in gamers of two genres and the relationship between sensation seeking and gaming addiction. METHODS: Heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP) and skin conductance were recorded at baseline, during gaming for 15 min and after gaming in 30 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and 30 first-person shooter (FPS) male gamers. Gamers were identified as addicted using the Addiction-Engagement Questionnaire. Sensation seeking was measured using the Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking. RESULTS: Addicted MMORPG gamers (n=16) displayed significant decreases in cardiovascular activity during gaming compared to baseline and showed significant increases after gaming. Addicted FPS gamers (n=13) had significant increases in BP during gaming which decreased significantly after gaming. In comparison, non-addicted MMORPG gamers (n=14) had significant decreases in HR during gaming, whereas BP in non-addicted MMORPG and FPS gamers (n=17) increased during gaming and after gaming. There were no significant relationships between sensation seeking and addiction. CONCLUSION: There are physiological arousal deficits in addicted gamers, and these patterns differ according to the genre of game played.

Process-oriented guided-inquiry learning improves long-term retention of information.

Many chemistry educators have adopted the process-oriented guided instructional learning (POGIL) pedagogy. However, it is not clear which aspects of POGIL are the most important in terms of actual learning. We compared 354 first-year undergraduate psychology students' learning in physiological psychology using four teaching methods: control, POGIL, POGIL without reporting [no report out (NRO)], and POGIL run by untrained graduate students [new facilitator (NF)]. Student activities were identical across POGIL variations and highly similar for control. Participants' knowledge was evaluated before (pretest), immediately after (posttest), and 2 wk later (followup). Control and POGIL groups showed no improvement at posttest, whereas NRO and NF groups both recalled more material than at pretest (P = 0.002 and P < 0.0005, respectively). In a surprise test 2 wk later, control (P < 0.0005), NRO (P = 0.03), and NF (P < 0.0005) groups recalled less than at posttest. The POGIL group showed the smallest drop in knowledge (P = 0.05). Importantly, the control group's knowledge was below pretest levels (P < 0.0005), whereas the POGIL, NRO, and NF groups' knowledge was not. Self-assessment of knowledge was consistent across groups at pretest, but POGIL participants had the lowest confidence at posttest and 2 wk later. At followup, the control, NRO, and NF groups showed greater confidence in their knowledge than the POGIL group (P = 0.03, P = 0.002, and P = 0.004, respectively). POGIL and its variations appear to consolidate existing knowledge against memory decay even when student confidence does not match performance.

Attentional differences in driving judgments for country and city scenes: Semantic congruency in inattentional blindness.

'Looked-but-failed-to-see' vehicle collisions occur when a driver gives all indications of having responsibly evaluated the driving situation yet still fails to see a hazard that is clearly in view. The experience maps well onto the psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness (IB). IB occurs when a viewer fails to see an unexpected object that is clearly visible, particularly if they are concentrating on an additional primary task. In this study, a driving-related IB task was used to explore whether an unexpected stimulus (US) such as a pedestrian or animal, is more likely to be seen in country or city-related driving scenarios if it is congruent or incongruent with the semantic context of the scenes, and thus congruent or incongruent with the attentional set of the viewer. Overall, participants were more likely to see the US in the City scenarios, which also demonstrated a borderline effect of congruency, with incongruent stimuli less likely to be seen than congruent stimuli. Analyses suggested that driver experience was related to detection of the US in City scenarios but not Country scenarios. However, analyses also revealed that participants generally tended to drive in city rather than country environments, thus prompting speculation that the results may reflect attentional requirements for familiar and unfamiliar driving scenarios. Thus we suggest that the analysis of the driving situation, and the attentional set that we develop to filter information, change when the driving situation is more familiar.

Temporal sampling in vision and the implications for dyslexia.

It has recently been suggested that dyslexia may manifest as a deficit in the neural synchrony underlying language-based codes (Goswami, 2011), such that the phonological deficits apparent in dyslexia occur as a consequence of poor synchronisation of oscillatory brain signals to the sounds of language. There is compelling evidence to support this suggestion, and it provides an intriguing new development in understanding the aetiology of dyslexia. It is undeniable that dyslexia is associated with poor phonological coding, however, reading is also a visual task, and dyslexia has also been associated with poor visual coding, particularly visuo-spatial sensitivity. It has been hypothesized for some time that specific frequency oscillations underlie visual perception. Although little research has been done looking specifically at dyslexia and cortical frequency oscillations, it is possible to draw on converging evidence from visual tasks to speculate that similar deficits could occur in temporal frequency oscillations in the visual domain in dyslexia. Thus, here the plausibility of a visual correlate of the Temporal Sampling Framework is considered, leading to specific hypotheses and predictions for future research. A common underlying neural mechanism in dyslexia, may subsume qualitatively different manifestations of reading difficulty, which is consistent with the heterogeneity of the disorder, and may open the door for a new generation of exciting research.

Minds on the blink: the relationship between inattentional blindness and attentional blink.

Failures of conscious visual awareness occur when specific task demands prevent an observer from detecting a stimulus that would otherwise be clearly visible. Two examples are inattentional blindness (IB) and attentional blink (AB). IB is the failure to detect an unexpected stimulus when attention is otherwise engaged. AB describes the inability to detect a second target that is presented within 180-500 ms of the first target. Previous research has suggested that similar cognitive processes underlie both IB and AB; however, they are distinct phenomena, and no evidence has directly linked the two. We tested the same group of observers on an IB task and an AB task. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that "non-noticers" who failed to detect an unexpected stimulus in the IB task also demonstrated a larger AB effect. This suggests that some observers may be more generally susceptible to failures of conscious visual awareness, regardless of specific context.