KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

Driver fatigue and performance decrements over time-on-task: Effects and mitigation

Road crashes are a leading cause of death by injury globally (WHO, 2018), with fatigue estimated to contribute to 17% of fatal crashes (Tefft, 2012; TfNSW, 2017). A century of research has advanced our knowledge regarding the causes and effects of fatigue, but much remains unknown. In particular, while there is evidence that both heightened sleep-need and characteristics of the driving task can give rise to fatigue, the relative and combined effects of these factors are not sufficiently understood. Also, while several potential task-based fatigue interventions have been suggested, the effectiveness of these potential interventions is not well established. The present research is comprised of three empirical, driving simulator-based studies that aim to enhance our current understanding of the causes and possible mitigators of driver fatigue. The first study aimed to determine the contributions of time-on-task and sleep restriction, individually and combined, on the development of driver fatigue and performance impairment, and to investigate the potentially protective effects of a simple task modification. Sixty participants drove a simulated, monotonous route for 2 hours, under conditions of either prior sleep restriction or no sleep restriction, and with either normal speed limit signs or signs that required calculation of a mathematical problem, which has previously been shown to protect performance (Dunn & Williamson, 2012). Results clearly demonstrate that both sleep restriction and time-on-task contribute independently to driver fatigue, but there was some indication that sleep-restricted drivers could initially protect their performance, perhaps through the exertion of greater effort. The speed sign manipulation failed to show any protective effects. The second study was designed to further examine the effect of task-factors on driver state and performance over time-on-task. Exposure to a secondary cognitive task has been found to improve driving performance during the period of exposure, but the effects of this intervention over the duration of a drive has received limited attention. This study specifically investigated whether repeated exposures to a secondary task can overcome the degradation of performance and subjective state that occurs over time-on-task, whether any such benefits are dependent on the cognitive workload imposed by the task, and whether these beneficial effects might be attributable to increased effort. This study (N = 17, fully within participants design) employed a secondary cognitive task commonly found to elicit temporally limited beneficial effects in driving performance (n-back task), presenting it three times during an otherwise monotonous 90-minute simulated drive. Each participant performed three drives, one in each of three conditions, with order of condition counterbalanced between participants. The three conditions involved either three periods of 2-back (higher cognitive workload), three periods of 0-back (lower cognitive workload), or no n-back task (control). Results demonstrated that the 2-back condition marginally improved driving performance during exposure but neither condition reduced the degradation of performance or subjective state over time-on-task. The third study built upon study two by exploring whether increasing the frequency of secondary-task exposures would result in reduced performance decrements over time and also by comparing the effect of secondary-task exposure to the effect of taking breaks from driving, which is currently the typical advice provided to drivers to counteract fatigue and performance decrements. This study involved ninety-two participants driving a simulated, monotonous route for 90 minutes in one of six conditions: Driving only (control); infrequent 2-back exposure (three exposures, as per study 2); frequent 2-back exposure (five exposures); continuous 2-back exposure throughout the drive; infrequent breaks (three breaks); or frequent breaks (five breaks). Results indicate that infrequent exposure to a secondary task sustained driving performance over 90-minutes of time-on-task, which is inconsistent with the findings of study 2. Contrary to expectations, frequent secondary-task exposure was less beneficial than infrequent exposure, providing no benefit over the control condition. Continuous secondary-task exposure was detrimental to performance over time-on-task. The provision of breaks from driving also sustained driving performance over time-on-task, with more frequent breaks providing marginally greater benefit than less frequent breaks. Providing participants with breaks from driving was also beneficial for subjective states, measured as sleepiness, fatigue and effort. Results also confirmed that performance improvements in the secondary-task conditions were not solely a result of increased effort. These studies demonstrate that continuous time-on-task driving in highway-like conditions has a robust fatiguing effect. This effect is independent of, but exacerbated by, receiving insufficient sleep, highlighting the importance of taking continuous operating time into consideration, even in the context of seemingly simple tasks and when drivers are well-slept. Additionally, these studies demonstrate that repeated exposure to a secondary task might be an effective intervention for sustaining performance during monotonous drives of at least 90-minutes duration, but the nature and frequency of such interventions appear to be a key factor in their effectiveness. Results also suggest that performance might be best sustained by taking very frequent breaks, and although this might be impractical in the context of driving, this finding might be applied to a broad range of tasks that require sustained attention, including operations in security and quality control

Project Hand in Hand

The project “Parents and Teachers Working Hand in Hand : Training Programme for Parents and Teachers of Pupils with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)” was prepared and co-ordinated by Ankara Provincial Directorate for National Education under the European Union Education and Youth Programme, Lifelong Learning Programme within the framework of Grundtvig Learning Partnership. At the planning stage of the project, as the co-ordinating institution, we wanted to prepare a project for pupils with ADHD because we know that, across the world, almost 5% of students suffer from this disorder and they encounter difficulties in their academic life, in their community and in their social relationships. Both parents and teachers encounter difficulties while they are supporting pupils with ADHD in their school lives. As the second biggest local education authority in Turkey, we decided to prepare this project for parents and teachers of pupils with ADHD to make everyone’s life easier. We shared our thoughts with different people and institutions from different countries and we realised that it is not only a problem in Turkey but also for other countries. As a result, we developed project partnerships with various educational institutions, universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from different countries. The project development stage was completed after contributions from all partners. Initially we had started with 8 partners but after approval for the project and the agreement of National Agencies of each partner countries, we implemented the project with 6 partners starting from 1st October 2007 to 31st July 2009

Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary

The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the individual components of vocabulary knowledge, in an attempt to understand the whole by first better understanding the parts. The word knowledge listing proposed by Nation (1990) is adopted in this thesis as a framework from which to study vocabulary. Chapter 1 introduces the word knowledge framework. Chapter 2 provides a literature review which summarizes the research concerning each of the eight types of word knowledge. Chapter 3 reports on a study which attempts to quantify native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Chapter 4 describes how a procedure for weighting word association responses was developed. Chapter 5 does the same for a measure of collocational knowledge. Chapter 6 applies the word knowledge research paradigm to the evaluation of the vocabulary items on the TOEFL test. Chapter 7 reports on a longitudinal study of four non-native subjects which tracked their incremental acquisition of spelling, association, collocation, grammar, and meaning knowledge for eleven words over one year. Chapter 8 examines the data from the longitudinal study to see if the various kinds of word knowledge are learned in a developmental sequence. Chapter 9 concludes the thesis by giving the author's opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the reported course of research

Proceedings, MSVSCC 2012

Proceedings of the 6th Annual Modeling, Simulation & Visualization Student Capstone Conference held on April 19, 2012 at VMASC in Suffolk, Virginia

Attitudes towards Finnish-accented English

The thesis opens with a discussion of what attitudes are, and develops with a review of studies of attitudes towards pronunciation error, attitudes towards foreign accents and perception of foreign-accented speakers. The empirical part of the thesis attempts to identify how native (British) and Finnish listeners of English react to and evaluate typical segmental features of mispronunciation in the English speech of Finnish men and women of various ages. Two experiments using modifications of the matched-guise technique were conducted, one to consider error evaluation and to establish a hierarchy of segmental mispronunciation, the other to examine speaker evaluation, the image of the speaker created by the mispronunciation. Recordings of Finnish-accented English were presented to male and female listeners of various ages, and reactions collected. Statistical analyses of the results were carried out and the following general conclusions were drawn: the English labiodental lenis fricative /v/ when mispronounced in the typical Finnish manner as a labiodental frictionless continuant [u] is not tolerated by native English listeners at all, though it is highly tolerated by Finnish-speaking listeners (and Swedish-speaking Finns) themselves; the degree of mispronunciation in Finnish-accented English seriously affects listeners' estimations of the speaker's age, bad mispronunciation prompting under-estimation of age and good pronunciation over-estimation; both Finnish-speaking listeners and English-speaking listeners have almost identical clear pre-set standards about what constitutes `good' and `bad' pronunciation; a Finnish speaker's phonemically `better' and `worse' pronunciation affects the image listeners have of the speaker, status/competence traits in particular being up-graded for better pronunciation, solidarity/benevolence traits remaining broadly unaffected, and Englishspeaking listeners generally being more positive towards the Finnish-accented speakers than compatriot Finns

Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary

The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the individual components of vocabulary knowledge, in an attempt to understand the whole by first better understanding the parts. The word knowledge listing proposed by Nation (1990) is adopted in this thesis as a framework from which to study vocabulary. Chapter 1 introduces the word knowledge framework. Chapter 2 provides a literature review which summarizes the research concerning each of the eight types of word knowledge. Chapter 3 reports on a study which attempts to quantify native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Chapter 4 describes how a procedure for weighting word association responses was developed. Chapter 5 does the same for a measure of collocational knowledge. Chapter 6 applies the word knowledge research paradigm to the evaluation of the vocabulary items on the TOEFL test. Chapter 7 reports on a longitudinal study of four non-native subjects which tracked their incremental acquisition of spelling, association, collocation, grammar, and meaning knowledge for eleven words over one year. Chapter 8 examines the data from the longitudinal study to see if the various kinds of word knowledge are learned in a developmental sequence. Chapter 9 concludes the thesis by giving the author's opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the reported course of research