Safety effects of roundabouts in Flanders: signal type, speed limits and vulnerable road users.

This paper examines the road safety effects of roundabouts built in Flanders between 1994 and 2000. While the overall effect is positive (39% reduction of injury accidents), the results vary considerably with the speed limit on the main and adjacent road (the higher, the more effective) and the pre-roundabout signalization of the intersection (32% reduction with traffic lights versus 44% without). However, microscopic analysis reveals that roundabouts are not always effective.

Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates vary according to individual differences in generalized control perception.

This study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in generalized control perception for 43 undergraduate adults may be reflected in Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates during conversation in an interview. Control perception was assessed by means of Rotter's internal-external Locus of Control questionnaires, while Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates were computed from filmed videos of interviews consisting of a series of questions which could presumably have triggered different mental states. Pearson correlations and linear regression analyses indicated that the individual differences in Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates did not differ significantly across different questions, but that Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates measured over the entire interview correlated positively and significantly with an internal Locus of Control (r = .

On feeling in control: a biological theory for individual differences in control perception.

This review aims to create a cross-disciplinary framework for understanding the perception of control. Although, the personality trait locus of control, the most common measure of control perception, has traditionally been regarded as a product of social learning, it may have biological antecedents as well. It is suggested that control perception follows from the brain's capacity for self regulation, leading to flexible and goal directed behaviours.

Road safety effects of roundabouts in Flanders.

Introduction: This paper analyzes the effect on road safety of 95 roundabouts that were built in Flanders between 1994 and 1999.

Results: The study shows that the effect on the number and severity of road accidents adjusted for the trend and regression to the mean is significant, but varies considerably in accordance with the speed limit regime on the intersection. Roundabouts are most effective on intersections of a main road with a high speed limit (90 km/h) and an adjacent road with a lower speed limit (50 or 70 km/h).

Why your "head is in the clouds" during thinking: the relationship between cognition and upper space.

Higher-order cognition in humans has not generally been viewed as closely entwined with the brain mechanisms mediating more basic perceptual-motor interactions in 3-D space. However, recent findings suggest that perceptual and oculomotor mechanisms that are biased toward the upper field (which disproportionately represents radially distant space) are activated during complex mental operations, ranging from semantic processing to mental arithmetic and memory search. The particularly close affinity with upward conjugate eye deviations--further confirmed in a study of 24 schoolchildren who responded to various mental questions and demands--suggests that active, abstract thinking in humans may have expropriated the focal-extrapersonal brain systems involved in saccadic exploration of the distant environment in other primates.