"Are you accepting new patients?" A pilot field experiment on telephone-based gatekeeping and Black patients' access to pediatric care.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To determine whether name and accent cues that the caller is Black shape physician offices' responses to telephone-based requests for well-child visits. METHOD AND DATA: In this pilot study, we employed a quasi-experimental audit design and examined a stratified national sample of pediatric and family practice offices. Our final data include information from 205 audits (410 completed phone calls). Qualitative data were blind-coded into binary variables. Our case-control comparisons using McNemar's tests focused on acceptance of patients, withholding information, shaping conversations, and misattributions. FINDINGS: Compared to the control group, "Black" auditors were less likely to be told an office was accepting new patients and were more likely to experience both withholding behaviors and misattributions about public insurance. The strength of associations varied according to whether the cue was based on name or accent. Additionally, the likelihood and ways office personnel communicated that they were not accepting patients varied by region. CONCLUSIONS: Linguistic profiling over the telephone is an aspect of structural racism that should be further studied and perhaps integrated into efforts to promote equitable access to care. Future research should look reactions to both name and accent, taking practice characteristics and regional differences into consideration

The effects of dividing attention on smooth pursuit eye tracking

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Young driver distraction by text messaging: A comparison of the effects of reading and typing text messages in Chinese versus English

Background: Reading and typing text messages while driving seriously impairs driving performance and are prohibited activities in many jurisdictions. Hong Kong is a bilingual society and many people write in both Chinese and English. As the input methods for text messaging in Chinese and English are considerably different, this study used a driving simulator approach to compare the effects of reading and typing Chinese and English text messages on driving performance. Method: The driving performances of 26 participants were monitored under the following conditions: (1) no distraction, (2) reading and typing Chinese text messages, and (3) reading and typing English text messages. The following measures of driving performance were collected under all of the conditions: reaction time (RT), driving lane undulation (DLU), driving speed fluctuation (DSF), and car-following distance (CFD) between test and leading cars. Results: RT, DLU, and DSF were significantly impaired by reading and typing both Chinese and English text messages. Moreover, typing text messages distracted drivers more than reading them. Although the Chinese text messaging input system is more complicated than the English system, the use of Chinese did not cause a significantly different degree of distraction. Conclusion: Both reading and typing text messages while driving should be prohibited regardless of whether Chinese or English is used.postprin

Evaluating interactions of task relevance and visual attention in driver multitasking

Use of cellular phones while driving, and safety implications thereof, has captured public and scientific interest. Previous research has shown that driver reactions and attention are impacted by cellular phone use. Generally, previous research studies have not focused on how visual attention and driver performance may interact. Strayer and colleagues found lower recognition for items present in the driving environment when drivers were using a cellular phone than when not using the phone; however, the tested items were not directly relevant to driving. Relevance to driving may have an impact on attention allocation. The current project used a mediumidelity driving simulator to extend previous research in two ways: 1) how attention is allocated across driving-relevant and -irrelevant items in the environment was investigated, and 2) driving performance measures and eye movement measures were considered together rather than in isolation to better illustrate the impact of cellular phone distraction on driver behavior. Results from driving performance measures replicated previous findings that vehicle control is negatively impacted by driver distraction. Interestingly, there were no interactions of relevance and distraction found, suggesting that participants responded to potential hazards similarly in driving-only and distraction conditions. In contrast to previous research, eye movement patterns (primarily measured by number of gazes) were impacted by distraction. Gaze patterns differed across relevance levels, with hazards receiving the most gazes, and signs receiving the fewest. The relative size of the critical items may have impacted gaze probability in this relatively undemanding driving environment. In contrast to the driving performance measures, the eye movement measures did show an interaction between distraction and relevance; thus, eye movements may be a more direct and more sensitive measure of driver attention. Recognition memory results were consistently near chance performance levels and did not reflect the patterns found in the eye movement or driving performance measures

ARE DISTRACTED DRIVERS AWARE THAT THEY ARE DISTRACTED?: EXPLORING AWARENESS, SELF-REGULATION, AND PERFORMANCE IN DRIVERS PERFORMING SECONDARY TASKS

Research suggests that driving while talking on a mobile telephone causes drivers not to respond to important events but has a smaller effect on their lane-keeping ability. This pattern is similar to research on night driving and suggests that problems associated with distraction may parallel those of night driving. Here, participants evaluated their driving performance before and after driving a simulated curvy road under different distraction conditions. In experiment 1 drivers failed to appreciate their distraction-induced performance decrements and did not recognize the dissociation between lane-keeping and identification. In Experiment 2 drivers did not adjust their speed to offset being distracted. Continuous feedback that steering skills are robust to distraction may prevent drivers from being aware that they are distracted

PowerSpy: Location Tracking using Mobile Device Power Analysis

Modern mobile platforms like Android enable applications to read aggregate power usage on the phone. This information is considered harmless and reading it requires no user permission or notification. We show that by simply reading the phone's aggregate power consumption over a period of a few minutes an application can learn information about the user's location. Aggregate phone power consumption data is extremely noisy due to the multitude of components and applications that simultaneously consume power. Nevertheless, by using machine learning algorithms we are able to successfully infer the phone's location. We discuss several ways in which this privacy leak can be remedied.Comment: Usenix Security 201