人类司机分心行为对无人车纵向速度控制的影响

无人车通常无法探测到人类司机的分心行为,这将导致无人车延迟地采取紧急制动来避免追尾。因此,本文致力于构建无人车控制与人类司机分心监测之间的桥梁,来辅助无人车预测潜在风险并像有经验的人类司机一样避让处于分心的司机,提高无人车的智能化水平和交通系统的安全性。首先,本文提出了一种整合了司机分心监测、车对车信息交换和无人车速度控制的可行系统框架。然后,基于卷积神经网络,本文提供了一种司机分心监测实现。最后,基于模型预测控制策略,本文提出了一种考虑了司机分心行为的无人车纵向速度控制方法,并给出持续可行性分析。仿真结果验证了本文工作的有效性。     

假肢手恒定力量输出的诱发肌电反馈控制研究

肌电假肢手的连续动态控制有益于提高假肢手的使用性能和用户对假肢手的交互控制能力,产生持续稳定的力量是假肢手需要完成的一种常见任务,但是疲劳、注意力分散等诸多因素都可能导致肌电信号发生变化从而影响假肢手稳定力量输出。本文提出了一种基于电刺激诱发肌电的假肢手稳定力量输出控制方法,通过电刺激尺神经诱发肌电信号对假肢手恒定力量输出进行持续控制。为验证方法可行性,招募了7名健康被试,首先测试了稳定抓握过程中注意力分散对屈肌肌电活动水平的影响,并确定电刺激强度与诱发肌电(M波)幅度的关系模型;在此基础上,测试了电刺激在注意力分散过程中是否能诱发出预期的肌电信号。结果表明注意力分散会引起肌电信号幅度下降,通过电刺激方法可以得到恒定的肌电输出;同时,通过调节刺激参数可以控制诱发肌电强度,可为肌电假肢手的稳定力量输出提供有效的控制信号。     

The duality of selection: Excitatory and inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention.

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements were made in an auditory selective-attention paradigm, both before and after a series of inhibition or discrimination training sessions. The presence of distractors caused poor perceptual sensitivity, weak P3 responses, conservative responding, and slow reaction times relative to baseline. Distraction prompted a frontal enhancement of ERP components occurring 100-250 ms after the onset of attended signals (N1, P2, and N2). Training ameliorated behavioral interference from distraction. Participants receiving inhibition training acquired improved inhibitory processing of distractors, an effect that peaked 200 ms after distractor onset, In a proposed model, distinct excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms work interactively to maintain sensitivity to environmental change in the fare of disruption from the contextual integration of irrelevant events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology and Perception of Patterns in Architecture

Pattern perception is often regarded as highly subjective, dependent on individual taste and preference. Neurologically, however, it has been proven that distinct areas of the brain are stimulated differently by different pattern design and colour combinations. Here Patricia A Rodemann probes into the very real physical and psychological consequences of product design finishes and surface patterning. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does distraction reduce the alcohol–aggression relation? A cognitive and behavioral test of the attention-allocation model.

Objective: This study provided the first direct test of the cognitive underpinnings of the attention-allocation model and attempted to replicate and extend past behavioral findings for this model as an explanation for alcohol-related aggression. Method: A diverse community sample (55% African American) of men (N = 159) between 21 and 35 years of age (M = 25.80) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 beverage conditions (i.e., alcohol, no-alcohol control) and 1 of 2 distraction conditions (i.e., distraction, no-distraction). Following beverage consumption, participants were provoked via reception of electric shocks and a verbal insult from a fictitious male opponent. Participants' attention allocation to aggression words (i.e., aggression bias) and physical aggression were measured using a dot probe task and a shock-based aggression task, respectively. Results: Intoxicated men whose attention was distracted displayed significantly lower levels of aggression bias and enacted significantly less physical aggression than intoxicated men whose attention was not distracted. However, aggression bias did not account for the lower levels of alcohol-related aggression in the distraction, relative to the no-distraction, condition. Conclusions: These results replicated and extended past evidence that cognitive distraction is associated with lower levels of alcohol-related aggression in highly provoked males and provide the first known cognitive data to support the attentional processes posited by the attention-allocation model. Discussion focused on how these data inform intervention programming for alcohol-related aggression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Divergent cognitive costs for online forms of reappraisal and distraction.

The present study was set out to evaluate the cognitive costs of two major emotion regulation strategies under conditions of increased challenge. Previous studies have established that cognitive reappraisal (construing an emotional event in nonemotional terms) has no cognitive costs. However, in all of these studies, reappraisal was initiated at the emotional situation onset, before emotional response tendencies sufficiently evolved. In the present study, the challenge of regulation strategies was increased by initiating strategies online at a late time point in an emotional situation. Applying this procedure revealed for the first time a cognitive cost for reappraisal and also provided double dissociation between reappraisal and another major cognitive emotion regulation strategy--distraction (diverting attention from an emotional situation via producing neutral thoughts). Specifically, late reappraisal, relative to distraction, resulted in an expenditure of self control resources. Late distraction but not reappraisal impaired memory encoding of the emotional situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mere perception of elaboration creates attitude certainty: Exploring the thoughtfulness heuristic.

Attitude theory has long proposed a mechanism through which antecedents of message elaboration produce attitude strength consequences. However, little direct evidence exists for the intervening process. The proposed thoughtfulness heuristic holds that perceiving that more thought has taken place leads to greater attitude certainty. Two roles were established for this heuristic: first as a mediator of the impact of antecedents of elaboration on attitude certainty and second as a way to influence attitude certainty independent of actual elaboration. In Studies 1 and 2, antecedents of elaboration (need for cognition, distraction) impacted attitude certainty because they impacted the actual amount of processing, which in turn affected perceptions of the amount of processing. In Studies 3 and 4, a manipulation of perceived thought impacted certainty independent of actual thought (i.e., after thinking had already occurred). Furthermore, the thoughtfulness heuristic was shown to influence behavioral intentions, establishing perceived amount of processing as both a mediator and an independent cause of attitude strength consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological Assessment of Executive Functions in Women: Effects of Age and Education.

The cognitive processes underlying age-related alterations in tests assumed to reflect frontal lobe functions were investigated with a card sorting test and an alternate semantic fluency task. The tests were administered to 133 healthy women belonging to 3 age groups (range = 50-92 years) classed according to 2 education levels. The results revealed a negative association between total word fluency and perseveration in the sorting test. Aging similarly affected performance in both education groups in some components of the tasks (atypical word fluency and sensitivity to distraction). However, aging did not affect performance to the same extent in each education group in other components (particularly those reflecting switching abilities and strategies). This quasi-experimental approach provides useful tools to identify specific processing mechanisms underlying executive functions in normal aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Representation of Homophones: Evidence From the Distractor-Frequency Effect.

Current models of word production offer different accounts of the representation of homophones in the lexicon. The investigation of how the homophone status of a word affects lexical access can be used to test theories of lexical processing. In this study, homophones appeared as word distractors superimposed on pictures that participants named orally. The authors varied distractor frequency, a variable that has been shown to modulate the interference that distractors produce on picture naming. The results of 3 experiments converged in showing that words interfered in proportion to their individual frequency in the language, even if they have high-frequency homophone mates. This effect of specific-word frequency is compatible with models that assume (a) distinct lexical representations for the individual homophones and (b) that access to such representations is modulated by frequency. The authors discuss the extent to which current models of word production satisfy these constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements of young and older adults while reading with distraction.

The authors used eye-tracking technology to examine young and older adults' online performance in the reading in distraction paradigm. Participants read target sentences and answered comprehension questions following each sentence. In some sentences, single-word distracters were presented in either italic or red font. Distracters could be related or unrelated to the target text. Online measures, including probability of fixation, fixation duration, and number of fixations to distracting text, revealed no age differences in text processing. However, young adults did have an advantage over older adults in overall reading time and text comprehension. These results provide no support for an inhibition deficit account of age differences in the reading in distraction paradigm, but are consistent with J. Dywan and W. E. Murphy's (1996) suggestion that older adults are less able than the young to distinguish target and distracter information held in working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)