PurposeThe objective was to explore the judgment and decision-making in rainfall adaptation as experienced by the civil servants adapting to local climate-change vulnerabilities.Design/methodology/approachEight civil servants in Swedish municipalities working with heavy rainfall adaptation were interviewed. The interviews were open-ended, and the interview data were used in descriptive phenomenological analysis.FindingsThe results revealed three key themes: (1) Complex decision-making, highlighting the handling of uncertainty; (2) reference points as inner compass, emphasizing the applying of appropriate strategies; and (3) overarching factors, including organizational and contextual influences. The main conclusion is that the municipal civil servants experience decision-making as a lived, situated and dynamic process that unfolds as intentional acts and is embedded in social, temporal and environmental contexts. This experience emerges from the interplay between felt uncertainty and the structuring of an imagined "safe city" emotionally invested in. Limited frontline experience, societal norms resistant to climate action, ambiguous adaptation objectives and organizational insufficiencies can undermine the quality of the decision-making process.Originality/valueThis study emphasizes important decision factors or processes in the dynamic handling of heavy rainfall at the frontline, which may contribute to risk management, public administration and resilience by furthering climate adaptation efforts.

This study is based on two previous studies that showed a post-treatment decrease in total criminal thinking (PICTS) and an increase in total sense of coherence (SOC) among youths and adults. The current study investigated whether these interventions changed the sub-scales of PICTS and SOC, and whether an increase in SOC would mediate a decrease in PICTS. Among both groups, the mean value of the sub-factors of PICTS decreased by the interventions, and increased for SOC sub-factors meaningfulness and manageability. Only among the adults, the increase in total sense of coherence and the sub-factor of manageability mediated the decrease of criminal thinking. 

Multisensory integration (MSI), in which sensory signals from different modalities are unified, is necessary for our comprehensive perception of and effective adaptation to the objects and events around us. However, individuals with schizophrenia suffer from impairments in MSI, which could explain typical symptoms like hallucination and reality distortion. Because the neural correlates of aberrant MSI in schizophrenia help us understand the physiognomy of this psychiatric disorder, we performed a systematic review of the current research on this subject. The literature search concerned investigated MSI in diagnosed schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls using brain imaging. Seventeen of 317 identified studies were finally included. To assess risk of bias, the Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment was used, and the review was written according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA). The results indicated that multisensory processes in schizophrenia are associated with aberrant, mainly reduced, neural activity in several brain regions, as measured by event-related potentials, oscillations, activity and connectivity. The conclusion is that a fronto-temporal region, comprising the frontal inferior gyrus, middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, along with the fusiform gyrus and dorsal visual stream in the occipital-parietal lobe are possible key regions of deficient MSI in schizophrenia.

Inattention can be considered a primary cause of vehicular accidents or crashes, and in-car warning signals are applied to alert the driver to take action even in automated vehicles. Because of age related decline of the older driver's abilities, in-car warning signals may need adjustment to the older driver. We therefore investigated the effects of uni-, bi- and trimodal directional warnings (i.e., light, sound, vibration) on young and older drivers' responses in a driving simulator. A young group of 15 drivers (20-25 years of age) and an older group of 16 drivers (65-79 years of age) participated. In the simulations, warning signal was presented at the left, the center, or the right in front of the participant. With a warning at the left, the center, and the right the correct response was to steer to the right, brake, and steer to the left, respectively. The main results showed the older drivers' responses were slower for each type of warning compared with the young drivers' responses. Overall, the responses were slower with an added cognitively loading task. The only multimodal type of warning inducing overall faster response than its constituent warning types was the vibration-sound, and only for the older drivers. Additionally, with the groups' responses collapsed, such a true multimodal effect on response time also showed for the center vibration-sound warning (i.e., braking response). The only multimodal warning showing clear reduction in response errors compared with its constituent warning types was the vibration-sound for the older drivers during extra cognitive load. The main conclusion is that older drivers can benefit from bimodal warning, as compared with unimodal, in terms of faster and more accurate response. The potential superiority of trimodal warning is nevertheless argued.

Two experiments were carried out to test speed perception dependency on field of view (FoV), virtual road markings (VRMs), and presentation orders. The primary purpose was to examine how the extent of the optic flow (foremost peripherally–vertically) informs the driver about egospeed. A second purpose was to examine different task demands and stimulus characteristics supporting rhythm-based versus energy-based processing. A third purpose was to examine speed changes indicative of changes in motion sensitivity. Participants were tested in a car simulator, with FoV resembling low front-door windows, and with VRMs inside the car. Three main results were found. Larger FoV, both horizontally and peripherally–vertically, significantly reduced participants' speed, as did VRMs. Delineator posts and road center lines were used for participants' rhythm-based processing, when the task was to drive at target speeds. Rich motion-flow cues presented initially resulted in lower egospeed in subsequent conditions with relatively less motion-flow cues. The practical implication is that non-iconic, naturalistic and intuitive interfaces can effectively instill spontaneous speed adaptation in drivers.

The cognitive intervention programme 'New Challenges' targeting adult men with a criminal lifestyle was evaluated in a pilot study. The participants were divided into a cognitive treatment group (n = 32) and a control group (n = 11). In the control group, six participants had no treatment and five participated in 12-step treatment. The participants were measured pre and post using the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS), the abridged version of sense of coherence (SOC), Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and Bergström's quality of programme delivery (QPD). The results of the treatment group showed that criminal thinking patterns dropped significantly from high values to close to normal level. SOC and positive affect increased significantly in the treatment group. Both SOC and positive affect showed positive correlation with QPD. Regarding the possible influence of the 12-step treatment, there was no difference in the control group between participants receiving 12-step treatment and those not receiving treatment. The main conclusion is that the cognitive treatment programme 'New Challenges' can contribute to reduced criminal thinking and increased SOC and positive affect, which may prove to be important precursors of reduced criminality.

The time saving bias predicts that the time saved when increasing speed from a high speed is overestimated, and underestimated when increasing speed from a slow speed. In a questionnaire, time saving judgements were investigated when information of estimated time to arrival was provided. In an active driving task, an alternative meter indicating the inverted speed was used to debias judgements. The simulated task was to first drive a distance at a given speed, and then drive the same distance again at the speed the driver judged was required to gain exactly 3 min in travel time compared with the first drive. A control group performed the same task with a speedometer and saved less than the targeted 3 min when increasing speed from a high speed, and more than 3 min when increasing from a low speed. Participants in the alternative meter condition were closer to the target. The two studies corroborate a time saving bias and show that biased intuitive judgements can be debiased by displaying the inverted speed.

Practitioner Summary: Previous studies have shown a cognitive bias in judgements of the time saved by increasing speed. This simulator study aims to improve driver judgements by introducing a speedometer indicating the inverted speed in active driving. The results show that the bias can be reduced by presenting the inverted speed and this finding can be used when designing in-car information systems.

Driving simulator studies can reveal relevant and valid aspects of driving behavior, but underestimation of distance and speed can negatively affect the driver’s performance, such as in performance of overtaking. One possible explanation for the underestimation of distance and speed is that two-dimensional projection of the visual scene disrupts the monocular-based illusory depth because of conflicting binocular and monocular information of depth. A possible solution might involve the strengthening of the monocular information so that the binocular information becomes less potent. In the present study, we used an advanced high-fidelity driving simulator to investigate whether adding the visual depth information of motion parallax from head movement affects sense of presence, judgment of distance and speed, and performance measures coupled with overtaking. The simulations included two types of driving scenario in which one was urban and the other was rural. The main results show no effect of this head-movement produced motion parallax on sense of presence, head movement, time to collision, distance judgment, or speed judgment. However, the results show an effect on lateral positioning. When initiating the overtaking maneuver there is a lateral positioning farther away from the road center as effect of the motion parallax in both types of scenario, which can be interpreted as indicating use of naturally occurring information that change behavior at overtaking. Nevertheless, only showing tendencies of effects, absent is any clear additional impact of this motion parallax in the simulated driving.