Understanding Willingness to Respond to Messages and its Relationship to Driving Performance

Research has demonstrated that distracted driving degrades performance. Factors influencing the decision to drive distracted were investigated. In experiment one, participants completed a discounting task where they chose between a smaller reward immediately or a delayed larger reward paired with the opportunity to text. Participants indicated willingness to wait to respond to a text in four scenes: two weather conditions and two modalities of the message. Willingness to wait to respond was related to modality but not weather. Individuals were placed into groups based on responses and differed in waiting preferences in all scenes. In experiment two, the discounting task was used and participants completed six drives consisting of three secondary tasks in two traffic levels. Participants completed the DRT measure of workload and rated driving performance. Drivers differed in driving performance and rating of driving performance for the tasks. These results have implications understanding the decision to drive distracted

When Jesus Takes the Wheel: An Investigation of Distraction in Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles have been suggested to be a solution to the problem of distracted driving. However, because autonomous vehicles are still developing, little is known about how drivers interact with them. Today’s autonomous vehicles still require drivers to be available to take control quickly. If drivers are engaged in secondary tasks, they are less able to safely take control or detect system notifications to take control. Using the delay discounting method, the cognitive underpinnings of the human decision-making process can be understood to inform us of the extent to which drivers are willing to engage with a distraction. The current work found a distinct group of high impulsivity group who were more willing to engage with distraction sooner, opposed to the low impulsive group. Regardless of impulsivity group, willingness to engage with distraction decreased after driving a partially autonomous vehicle. This timing effect was present in subsequent analyses for the high impulsive group but not the low impulsive group. However, there was an interaction for timing and vehicle driven among both the high and low groups in which the high impulsive group generally became less willing to engage with distraction after driving the most vehicles, and the low impulsive group became more willing to engage with distraction. Also, the overall group was less willing to engage with distraction when hypothetically driving a standard vehicle than a fully autonomous vehicle. This effect was also found among the high impulsivity group but not the low impulsivity group. Finally, only the low impulsivity group reported less willingness to respond when the message was on the phone’s screen rather than the vehicle voice system. However, there was an interaction with the message modality and timing. After driving, both the overall sample and low impulsivity group were less willing to respond to a message via the phone but more willing to respond via voice system. Examining driver behavior and cognitive demand in autonomous vehicles has critical implications for understanding how drivers interact with these vehicles. As autonomous vehicles become more mainstream, it becomes increasingly necessary for our safety to understand driver behavior in varying circumstances

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research