George Dunbar

Children's Attentional Skills and Road Behavior

Switching attention and concentration, 2 skills expected to be used by skillful pedestrians, were studied. A sample of 160 children (aged 4 years 3 months-10 years) played a computer game involving attention switching. To examine concentration, a subset of the children was distracted with a cartoon video while they attempted a difficult task that required matching familiar figures. The same subset was also observed crossing roads. Older children switched faster and were less distracted. Children who were better at switching were more likely to show awareness of traffic when about to cross a road. Children who maintained concentration when challenged by a distracting event crossed the road in a less reckless manner. Parents and educators designing safety programs should take into account the development of these skills.

Young children's concepts of danger

Two studies are reported here investigating the development of childrens concepts of danger, both in terms of their understanding and the salience of danger in unprompted situations. In Expt 1, 120 children, aged between 5 and 10 years, and 30 adults were asked to describe and sort materials representing situations of varying degrees of hazard. Salience was assessed from uncued descriptions and categorizations of the materials and understanding of danger was assessed through cued categorization. In Expt 2, 120 children aged from 4 to 8 years were asked to identify a dangerous situation from a set of four similar pictures. The results of both experiments demonstrated that even the youngest children demonstrated a rudimentary concept of danger and this understanding developed with age. Although the salience of danger also increased with age, it was still low in the 9-10-year-olds when compared with adults. Prior experience of danger, parental educational level and nature of presentation were also found to have an influence. The findings are discussed in terms of safety education and possible overestimation of childrens ability to recognize danger from their cued knowledge.

The relative risk of nearside accidents is high for the youngest and oldest pedestrians

Police road accident data from Great Britain for 1990-2009 were analysed. RR(NF) is the risk of a casualty occurring in the first half of road crossing, the half nearest to the pedestrians starting position at the roadside, compared to the risk of it occurring in the second half. Children and younger adult pedestrians had a high relative risk of being killed or seriously injured in the nearside of the road (RR(NF)). RR(NF) decreased with age, for men and women, but rose again for people aged over 85 years. It was also substantially lower for children under 10 years old. Three possible explanations for lifespan changes in RR(NF) were evaluated: that change results from slower walking speeds, from a specific failure to attend to the far side before beginning to cross, or from generalised attention control failure. Young peoples higher RR(NF) is consistent with evidence that they are prone to generalised attention control failures.

Task-based nutrition labelling.

Task-based interface design principles (TBI) were evaluated as a framework for designing effective nutritional labels. In two experiments a total of 123 people assembled a packed lunch, selecting components using labels in GDA or TBI format, or when given only the names of the foods. Study 1 found that a GDA label helped people make healthier choices than the product name alone, but that for a number of types of food, most people would make the same decision with or without a GDA label. Moreover, decisions were much faster when made with the name alone. Study 2 introduced a TBI label in the context of the more specific task of keeping the salt in the lunch under 1g. TBI and GDA labels reduced salt equally, but only the TBI label was as quick as the name alone. Labels that are aligned with peoples specific objectives are more efficient. TBI is a potentially useful framework, that can be deployed using mobile computing.

Parent/child interaction and road behaviour: An exploratory study

The relationship between parent-child interaction and child pedestrian behaviour was investigated by comparing parent-child communication to road-crossing behaviour. Forty-four children and their parents were observed carrying out a communication task (the Map Task), and were covertly filmed crossing roads around a university campus. The Map Task provided measures of task focus and sensitivity to anothers current knowledge, which we predicted would be reflected in road-crossing behaviour. We modelled indices of road behaviour with factor scores derived from a principal-component analysis of communication features, and background variables including the age, sex and traffic experience of the child, and parental education. A number of variables were significantly related to road crossing, including the age and sex of the child, the length of the conversation, and specific conversational features such as the checking and clarification of uncertain information by both parent and child. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The clustering of natural terms: an adaptive resonance theory model

Adaptive resonance theory is shown to model polysemous lexical relations. The model derives the relations from indirect subjective property rating judgements provided by naive native speakers. The relations derived correspond closely to relations given in an independent corpus-based lexicographic analysis.

Conceptual development: an adaptive resonance theory model of polysemy

Adaptive Resonance Theory provides a model of pattern classification that addresses the plasticity--stability dilemma and allows a neural network to detect when to construct a new category without the assistance of a supervisor. We show that Adaptive Resonance Theory can be applied to the study of natural concept development. Specifically, a model is presented which is able to categorize different usages of a common noun and group the polysemous senses appropriately.