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Biomedical subjects

B S Parsonson

Publications and source records attributed to B S Parsonson.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Child pedestrians' crossing gap thresholds.

Three gender-balanced groups of 16 school children (5-6 years, 8-9 years, 11-12 years) participated in individual pretests of vision, hearing, and time to walk across a 12-m wide urban street and back. Each child then completed 10 roadside trials requiring judgement of the threshold point at which they would no longer cross in front of traffic approaching from their right. The judgements were made from a site immediately in front of a parked car at a point 2 m from the kerb and 4 m from the centre of the road. Traffic speeds and distances were measured using a laser speed and distance detector. The results indicated that, overall, distance gap thresholds remained constant regardless of vehicle approach speeds. Analysis of the thresholds for distance gap judgements for the 4-m half-street crossing showed that some of the older children could be expected to make safe decisions, but this was not so for the 5-6- and 8-9-year-olds at vehicle approach speeds above 60 kph. Almost two-thirds of the children reported using distance to judge gaps, which proved the least adequate strategy in terms of proportion of resultant safe decisions. The findings are discussed in relation to developing effective child pedestrian safety strategies.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed1997

Age related effects of restricted head movements on the useful field of view of drivers.

Eighty drivers in a sample of four groups of 20 (10 males, 10 females), aged under 30 years ('young'), 40-59 ('middle aged'), 60-69 ('older'), and 70 years and over ('oldest'), participated in tests of head rotation and of several visual functions relevant to safe driving. Head rotation data showed that the oldest drivers had lost about 1/3 of movement and that the loss tended to be more evident in males. Second attempts almost always produced slightly better results. All participants had at least 20/40 binocular vision, however, tests of monocular visual acuity, stereovision, and horizontal peripheral vision revealed that the poorest performers were aged 60 years and over and that the degree of decrement increased with age. Many of the older and oldest drivers in the sample were both severely restricted in their ability to turn their head and evidenced a loss of visual functioning. Analysis of the effect of reduced head movement on the useful field of view indicated that, for the drivers aged 60 years and over, there was an evident restriction on the distances at which approaching traffic could be brought into the central, stationary field, so that even at maximum head rotation plus one saccade (15 degrees), approaching vehicles would not be clearly perceived beyond a distance of 50 m. The findings are discussed in relation to older drivers' involvement in intersection accidents.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed1993

The development and evaluation of a sexual harassment contact person training package.

The effectiveness of a training package to teach listening and helping skills to three pairs of sexual harrassment contact person trainees was evaluated, using a multiple probe design. The training package comprised five components: behavioral specifications, rationales, situational examples, study guides, and role-play exercises, provided in a written instructional format based on guidelines developed by Fawcett and Fletcher. Evaluation involved pre- and posttraining measures of target behavior occurrence, relevant knowledge, and self-rated confidence level. Ratings of performance were also provided by potential consumers as a measure of social validity. Findings indicated that the package was effective in increasing listening and helping skills, knowledge, and confidence of trainees and that skills generalized to new simulated cases and were maintained over time.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Training generalized improvisation of tools by preschool children.

The development of new, "creative" behaviors was examined in a problem-solving context. One form of problem solving, improvisation, was defined as finding a substitute to replace the specifically designated, but currently unavailable, tool ordinarily used to solve the problem. The study examined whether preschool children spontaneously displayed generalized improvisation skills, and if not, whether they could be trained to do so within different classes of tools. Generalization across different tool classes was monitored but not specifically trained. Five preschool children participated in individual sessions that first probed their skill at improvising tools, and later trained and probed generalized improvisation in one or more of three tool classes (Hammers, Containers, and Shoelaces), using a multiple-baseline design. All five children were trained with Hammers, two were trained in two classes, and two were trained in all three tool classes. Four of the five children improvised little in Baseline. During Training, all five showed increased generalized improvisation within the trained class, but none across classes. Tools fabricated by item combinations were rare in Baseline, but common in Training. Followup probes showed that the training effects were durable.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1974

The application of generalized correct social contingencies: an evaluation of a training program.

Two aides operating a kindergarten-style program for institutionalized mental retardates were trained, using observer feedback, to apply generalized "correct" social contingencies to 10 defined classes of appropriate and inappropriate child behaviors. A multiple baseline design was used to demonstrate, sequentially, the effects of the training procedure upon the attending behavior of each teacher. After withdrawal of feedback, a posttraining follow-up served to assess the durability of training. For both aides, the effect of training was to increase the proportion of appropriate child behaviors attended to, compared with baseline data, and a follow-up over a number of weeks indicated that the effects of training were apparently durable.

Attention↗