Search results for "Individual Difference"

Directional sense in familiar environments misaligned with the cardinal directions: Oral presentation

2021

Refining distraction potential testing guidelines by considering differences in glancing behavior

2021

Driver distraction is a recognized cause of traffic accidents. Although the well-known guidelines for measuring distraction of secondary in-car tasks were published by the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2013, studies have raised concerns on the accuracy of the method defined in the guidelines, namely criticizing them for basing the diversity of the driver sample on driver age, and for inconsistent between-group results. In fact, it was recently discovered that the NHTSA driving simulator test is susceptible to rather fortuitous results when the participant sample is randomized. This suggests that the results of said test are highly dependent on the s…

Spatial Ability and Learning to Program

2008

Results in introductory computer programming modules are often disappointing, and various individual differences have been found to be relevant. This paper reviews work in this area, with particular reference to the effect of a student’s spatial ability. Data is presented on a cohort of 49 students enrolled on an MSc in Information Technology course at a university in the UK. A measure was taken of their mental rotation ability, and a questionnaire administered that focused on their previous academic experience, and expectations relating to the introductory computer programming module they were studying. The results showed a positive correlation between mental rotation ability and success i…

On the relationship between occlusion times and in-car glance durations in simulated driving

2023

Drivers have spare visual capacity in driving, and often this capacity is used for engaging in secondary in-car tasks. Previous research has suggested that the spare visual capacity could be estimated with the occlusion method. However, the relationship between drivers’ occlusion times and in-car glance duration preferences has not been sufficiently investigated for granting occlusion times the role of an estimate of spare visual capacity. We conducted a driving simulator experiment (N = 30) and investigated if there is an association between drivers’ occlusion times and in-car glance durations in a given driving scenario. Furthermore, we explored which factors and variables could explain t…

The Two-Systems Account of Theory of Mind: Testing the Links to Social- Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities

2018

According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of others involves both fast social-perceptual processes, as well as slower, reflexive cognitive operations (Frith and Frith, 2008; Apperly and Butterfill, 2009). To test the respective roles of specific abilities in either of these processes we administered 15 experimental procedures to a large sample of 343 participants, testing ability in face recognition and holistic perception, language, and reasoning. ToM was measured by a set of tasks requiring ability to track and to infer complex emotional and mental states of others from faces, eyes, spoken language, and prosody. We used structural equation m…

Maladaptive music listening strategies are modulated by individual traits

2022

Music listening is a great resource for mental well-being, pleasure, and self-regulation, but it may also be maladaptive. Depression, for instance, has been shown to relate to music use that is characterized by rumination, avoidance, and mood worsening. However, we know little of the role of individual differences in such maladaptive music use. Hence, this study focused on examining the role of personality, empathic traits, emotional contagion, and the types of musical reward as predictors of maladaptive music listening. Participants ( N = 318) answered an online survey comprising measures for the abovementioned traits in addition to the Healthy-Unhealthy Music Scale (HUMS) as a measure of…

Measuring music-induced emotion: A comparison of emotion models, personality biases, and intensity of experiences

2011

Most previous studies investigating music-induced emotions have applied emotion models developed in other fields to the domain of music. The aim of this study was to compare the applicability of music-specific and general emotion models – namely the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS), and the discrete and dimensional emotion models – in the assessment of music-induced emotions. A related aim was to explore the role of individual difference variables (such as personality and mood) in music-induced emotions, and to discover whether some emotion models reflect these individual differences more strongly than others. One hundred and forty-eight participants listened to 16 film music excerpts a…

Effects of conversation content on viewing dyadic conversations

2016

People typically follow conversations closely with their gaze. We asked whether this viewing is influenced by what is actually said in the conversation and by the viewer’s psychological condition. We recorded the eye movements of healthy (N = 16) and depressed (N = 25) participants while they were viewing video clips. Each video showed two people, each speaking one line of dialogue about socio-emotionally important (i.e., personal) or unimportant topics (matter-of-fact). Between the spoken lines, the viewers made more saccadic shifts between the discussants, and looked more at the second speaker, in personal vs. matter-of-fact conversations. Higher depression scores were correlated with les…

The high five: Associations of the five positive factors with the big five and well-being

2017

The study of individual differences in positive characteristics has mainly focused on moral traits. The objectives of this research were to study individual differences in positive characteristics from the point of view of the layperson, including non-moral individual characteristics, and to generate a replicable model of positive factors. Three studies based on a lexical approach were conducted. The first study generated a corpus of words which resulted in a refined list of socially shared positive characteristics. The second study produced a five-factor model of positive characteristics: erudition, peace, cheerfulness, honesty, and tenacity. The third study confirmed the model with a diff…

Data from: Orientation-invariance of individual differences in three face processing tasks

2018

Numerous studies have reported impairments in perception and recognition, and, particularly, in part-integration of faces following picture-plane inversion. Whether these findings support the notion that inversion changes face processing qualitatively remains a topic of debate. To examine whether associations and dissociations of the human face processing ability depend on stimulus orientation, we measured face recognition with the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), along with experimental tests of face perception and selective attention to faces and non-face objects in a sample of 314 participants. Results showed strong inversion effects for all face-related tasks, and modest ones for non-…