Look: No hands!  Driving on the motorway  (Prof. Jim Hartley)

Transportation Research Part F (in press).

Jim gets fed up being a passenger on coach trips, so to alleviate boredom he counts things.
This paper describes how over 250 drivers on the M6 held their steering wheels.   About half of them drove with one hand on the wheel - and two drove with no hands in a traffic hold up.

Only 5 were using mobile phones.

Jim comments: Science begins with observation. We need facts before speculation.

On May 12th Dr Kirsty Budds was invited to participate in a round table discussion on representations of age and parenthood in the media.

The roundtable discussion formed part of a symposium entitled 'Postponing Childbirth, Extending Fertility? Biotechnologies and the transformations of reproductive life' at De Montford University, Leicester. The 2-day symposium brought together a number of researchers from varied disciplines, including nursing and midwifery, sociology, obstetrics and psychology, in order to discuss the causes and implications of the increasing trend towards later parenthood.

Kirsty's research findings on how the media portrays 'older mothers' - women who have their first babies over the age of 35 - can be found here:
Budds, K., Locke, A., & Burr, V. (2013). Risky Business: Constructing the 'choice' to 'delay' motherhood in the British press. Feminist Media Studies, 13, 132-147."

Why can’t we have two indicator controls – one on the left of the wheel (to indicate going left) and one on the right (to indicate going right)?

This would prevent people from having problems driving unfamiliar cars as it is natural to use the left hand signal left and the right hand for going right.

Hartley, J. (2016).  Hands up to solve in-car signal strife. AutoExpress, 2016, March 9-16,25.

Note 1: AutoExpress has a weekly circulation of 50,010 (slightly less than Nature ,but massively more than most psychology journals)

Note 2: Almost all aspects of psychology: perception, cognition, social, learning, skill, ageing, etc., etc. can be studied in the context of driving.

The best journal in this field goes by the unexciting title of Transportation Research Part F.

Dr Claire Fox 2016 Publications

Fox, C. L., Corr, M-L., Gadd, D., & Sim, J. (2016). Evaluating the effectiveness of domestic abuse prevention education: Are certain children more or less receptive to the messages conveyed? Legal and Criminological Psychology, 21, 212-227.

Fox, C. L., Hunter, S. C., & Jones, S. E. (2016). Associations between humor types in children and their psychosocial adjustment. Personality and Individual Differences, 89, 86-91. 

Fox, C. L., Hunter, S. C., & Jones, S. E. (2016). Reciprocity between humor styles and psychosocial adjustment in children. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 12, 377-389. 

Hunter, S. C., Fox, C. L., & Jones, S. E. (in press). Humor style similarity and difference in friendship dyads: Testing the homophily hypothesis. Journal of Adolescence.

James, L. & Fox, C. L. (2016). Children’s understanding of self-focused humor styles. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 12, 420-433. 

James, L. & Fox, C. L. (in press). Development of a humor styles questionnaire for younger children. Humor.

Recent publications from the New Dynamics of Ageing project

• Murray, M., Amigoni, D., Bernard, M., Crummett, A., Goulding, A. Munro, L., Newman, A., Rezzano, J., Rickett, M., Tew, P., & Warren, L.  (2014). Understanding and transforming ageing through the arts. In A. Walker (Ed.),The new science of ageing (pp. 77-112). Bristol: Policy.
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• Vera-Sanso, P., Barrientos, A., Damodaran, L., Gilhooly, K., Hennessy, C., Means, R., Murray, M., Newman, A., Olphert, W., Tew, P., Thompson, J.L., Victor, C., & Walford, N. (2014). Social participation and connectivity. In A. Walker (Ed.), The new science of ageing (pp.181-208). Bristol: Policy.
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• Bernard, M., Rickett, M., Amigoni, D., Munro, L., Murray, M. & Rezzano, J. (2015). Ages and stages: the place of theatre in the lives of older people.  Ageing & Society, 35, 1119-1145.
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• Murray, M., & Ziegler, F. (2015). The narrative psychology of community health workers.  Journal of Health Psychology, 20, 338-349
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• Murray, M., & Wright-Bevans, K. (2015). Community engagement. In Improving Later Life: Vulnerability and Resilience in Older People (pp. 23-25). London: AgeUK. 

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Latest from the lord of time

Droit-Volet, S., & Wearden, J.H. (2015).  Experience

Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the

experience of passage of time in young and elderly

adults. Acta Psychologica, 156, 77-82.

Droit-Volet, S., Wearden,J.H., & Zalanti, P.S. (2015). 

Cognitive abilities required in time judgement 

depending on the temporal tasks used: A 

comparison of children and adults.  Quarterly 

Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 2216-2242.

Wearden, J.H. (2015). Passage of time judgements. 

Consciousness and Cognition, 38, 165-171.