Pushing and Non-pushing Forward Motion in Crowds: A Systematic Psychological Observation Method for Rating Individual Behavior in Pedestrian Dynamics

Pushing behavior impairs people’s sense of well-being in a crowd and represents a significant safety risk. There are nevertheless still a lot of unanswered questions about who behaves how in a crowded situation, and when, where, and why pushing behavior occurs. Beginning from the supposition that a crowd is not thoroughly homogenous and that behavior can change over time, we developed a method to observe and rate forward motion. Based on the guidelines of quantitative content analysis, we came up with four categories: (1) falling behind, (2) just walking, (3) mild pushing, and (4) strong pushing. These categories allow for the classification of the behavior of any person at any time in a video, and thereby the method allows for a comprehensive systematization of individuals’ actions alongside temporal crowd dynamics. The application of this method involves videos of moving crowds including trajectories. The initial results show a very good inter-coder reliability between two trained raters demonstrating the general suitability of the system to describe forward motion in crowds systematically and quantify it for further analysis. In this way, pushing behavior can be better understood and, prospectively, risks better identified. This article offers a comprehensive presentation of this method of observation

Histology in 3D:development of an online interactive student resource on epithelium

Epithelium is an important and highly specialised tissue type that makes up the lining of inner and outer surfaces of the human body. It is proposed that a self-study tool adds to efficient learning and lecturing on this complicated topic in medical curricula. This paper describes the development and evaluation of an online interactive 3D resource on epithelium for undergraduate medical students. A first evaluation was carried out by means of an online survey (n = 37). The resource was evaluated positively on the website in general, its visual contents and its value and potential for the medical curriculum

Exploring the Dynamic Relationship between Pushing Behavior and Crowd Dynamics

Crowds, subjects of considerable complexity, have been extensively studied both as homogeneous entities and as collective sums of individual movements in various studies. However, crowd models, being grounded in physics, are limited in terms of incorporating psychological perspectives on individual behavior. Building upon the premise that crowd behavior is heterogeneous and dynamic, particularly in bottleneck scenarios, this study aims to explore the nuances of forward motion. Adopting the category system proposed by Lügering et al. (2022) (consisting the following categories: strong pushing, mild pushing, just walking, falling behind), this paper investigates the circumstances and locations where pushing or non-pushing behaviors arise, intensify, or cease within crowds approaching bottlenecks. The study utilized 14 video materials obtained from previous laboratory pedestrian experiments to examine the spatial characteristics of forward motion and pushing behavior in relation to corridor widths and varied motivational instructions. Two trained raters independently annotated these videos, achieving satisfactory inter-rater agreement (KALPHA = .65) , and a joint dataset was then created for each video. These videos consisted both high (7 videos) and low (7 videos) motivation scenarios. The importance of corridor width was also considered: four videos featured a 5.6m width, another four featured a 4.5m width, and the remaining videos displayed widths of 3.4m, 2.3m, and 1.2m twice. Our findings suggest a tendency for increased pushing behavior or an increase in the categories as individuals approach the bottleneck, regardless of the width of the corridor or the motivational instruction. Furthermore, non-pushing behaviors were predominantly observed in the areas farther away from the bottleneck. A noticeable trend was observed in high motivation scenarios, which generally exhibited more instances of pushing behavior. The effect of corridor width indicated that, in certain cases, pedestrians who push in wider corridors experience faster access to the bottleneck. However, this effect is less significant in narrower widths

"Mein Gott, der ist noch so klein, den soll ich jetzt abgeben" - elterliche Vorstellungen und Erfahrungen ihrer Beziehung zum Kind im Kontext der Kleinkindbetreuung

"In den vergangenen Jahren wurden in Deutschland neue Betreuungsplätze für Kinder unter drei Jahren geschaffen, sodass das Alter bei Betreuungsbeginn nach vorne rückt. Dieser Artikel rekonstruiert elterliche Vorstellungen einer guten Eltern-Kind-Beziehung zu diesem Zeitpunkt kulturellen Wandels. Er basiert auf zehn qualitativen, problemzentrierten Interviews, die mit der dokumentarischen Methode interpretiert wurden. Die identifizierten Orientierungsrahmen werden mit dem theoretischen Konzept des intensive parenting konfrontiert, das sich im Interviewmaterial insbesondere im Ideal des „richtigen Inputs“ wiederfindet. Gleichzeitig sind die Eltern in dieser Studie aber weniger Kindzentriert als dieses Konzept nahelegt. Vielmehr sind sie stark auf ihre eigenen Erfahrungen und ihr Bedürfnis nach Bindung fokussiert. Daher schlägt dieser Artikel ein doppelseitiges Konzept des intensive parenting vor, Kind-zentriert und Eltern-zentriert. Dieses Konzept wird ins Verhältnis zur psychologischen Bindungstheorie und zu modernen Konzepten der romantischen Liebe gesetzt." (Autorenreferat)"In recent years, the German government has created new kindergarten and nursery places for children under the age of three years. As a result, children are starting day care earlier. This paper reconstructs parental ideas of good parent-child relationships at this moment of cultural change. It is based on in-depth interpretations of ten problemcentred, qualitative interviews. The empirical findings are discussed in relation to the theoretical concept of intensive parenting which can be identified in the material, especially in the ideal of 'right input'. However, parents in this study are not as child-centred as this concept suggests. They are very much oriented to their own experiences and articulate their need for attachment. This paper therefore suggests a double-sided concept of intensive parenting which is child-centred and parent-centred. This concept is discussed in relation to psychological attachment theory and modern concepts of romantic love." (author's abstract

Histology in 3D:development of an online interactive student resource on epithelium

Epithelium is an important and highly specialised tissue type that makes up the lining of inner and outer surfaces of the human body. It is proposed that a self-study tool adds to efficient learning and lecturing on this complicated topic in medical curricula. This paper describes the development and evaluation of an online interactive 3D resource on epithelium for undergraduate medical students. A first evaluation was carried out by means of an online survey (n = 37). The resource was evaluated positively on the website in general, its visual contents and its value and potential for the medical curriculum

Pedestrian Crowd Management Experiments: A Data Guidance Paper

Understanding pedestrian dynamics and the interaction of pedestrians with their environment is crucial to the safe and comfortable design of pedestrian facilities. Experiments offer the opportunity to explore the influence of individual factors. In the context of the project CroMa (Crowd Management in transport infrastructures), experiments were conducted with about 1000 participants to test various physical and social psychological hypotheses focusing on people's behaviour at railway stations and crowd management measures. The following experiments were performed: i) Train Platform Experiment, ii) Crowd Management Experiment, iii) Single-File Experiment, iv) Personal Space Experiment, v) Boarding and Alighting Experiment, vi) Bottleneck Experiment and vii) Tiny Box Experiment. This paper describes the basic planning and implementation steps, outlines all experiments with parameters, geometries, applied sensor technologies and pre- and post-processing steps. All data can be found in the pedestrian dynamics data archive.Comment: 58 pages, 19 figures, under review Collective Dynamic