Developing a taxonomy of hazards and hazard mitigation strategies for Motorised mobility scooter users.

The increased use of motorised mobility scooters (MMSs) presents a road safety challenge as using a MMS has risks for the user, pedestrians, and other road users. In relation to enhancing MMS driving safety, much of the training and available literature focuses on training vehicular control. Equally important is the need to investigate higher-order cognitive skills involved in driving MMSs, particularly hazard perception. Through a large questionnaire study with MMS users, we develop a taxonomy of the types of hazard MMS users encounter when crossing roads and strategies that are used to negotiate these hazards. Whilst MMS experience modulated hazard perception and strategy use, a core set of hazards and strategies were identified that have policy and practice implications for training interventions and the built environment. Exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of MMS use indicated its impact on various wellbeing outcomes as well as some potential barriers to use.

Metacognition during unfamiliar face matching.

Kruger and Dunning (1999) described a metacognitive bias in which insight into performance is linked to competence: poorer performers are less aware of their mistakes than better performers. Competence-based insight has been argued to apply generally across task domains, including a recent report investigating social cognition using a variety of face-matching tasks. Problematically, serious statistical and methodological criticisms have been directed against the traditional method of analysis used by researchers in this field. Here, we further illustrate these issues and investigate new sources of insight within unfamiliar face matching. Over two experiments (total N = 1077), where Experiment 2 was a preregistered replication of the key findings from Experiment 1, we found that insight into performance was multi-faceted. Participants demonstrated insight which was not based on competence, in the form of accurate updating of estimated performance. We also found evidence of insight which was based on competence: the difference in confidence on correct versus incorrect trials increased with competence. By providing ways that we can move beyond problematic, traditional approaches, we have begun to reveal a more realistic story regarding the nature of insight into face perception.

The Relationship Between Gambling Event Frequency, Motor Response Inhibition, Arousal, and Dissociative Experience.

Speed of play has been identified as a key structural characteristic in gambling behaviour, where games involving higher playing speeds enhance the experience of gambling. Of interest in the present study is the consistent finding that games with higher event frequencies are preferred by problem gamblers and are associated with more negative gambling outcomes, such as difficulty quitting the game and increased monetary loss. The present study investigated the impact of gambling speed of play on executive control functioning, focusing on how increased speeds of play impact motor response inhibition, and the potential mediating role arousal and dissociative experience play in this relationship. Fifty regular non-problem gamblers took part in a repeated-measures experiment where they gambled with real money on a simulated slot machine across five speed of play conditions. Response inhibition was measured using an embedded Go/No-Go task, where participants had to withhold motor responses, rather than operating the spin button on the slot machine when a specific colour cue was present. Results indicated that response inhibition performance was significantly worse during faster speeds of play, and that the role of arousal in this relationship was independent of any motor priming affect. The implications of these findings for gambling legislation and gambling harm-minimisation approaches are discussed.

Face Familiarity and Image-Specific Memory.

Face familiarity produces advantages for both memory and matching. By developing an internal representation through repeated experience, viewers extract identity-specific information that aids subsequent recognition. However, researchers have recently argued that this process may also result in a familiarity disadvantage, whereby specific instances of the face are more difficult to remember, perhaps due to this process of prioritising identity- over image-specific information. Although previous experiments found no evidence of this disadvantage in working memory, initial research has demonstrated an effect in longer term storage. Here, we attempted to replicate this finding by focussing on the ability to learn images of a single (un)familiar identity. Our results failed to demonstrate a familiarity disadvantage while replicating the finding that familiarity influences response bias. As researchers continue to investigate how familiarity alters both internal representations and associated processes, it is important to establish which processes may or may not be affected.