Camelia Popa

Bio: Camelia Popa is an academic researcher from National University of Music Bucharest. The author has contributed to research in topics: Personality. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 7 citations.

Cognitive and personality determinants of safe driving performance in professional drivers

Abstract: Large truck and bus crashes still cause a high rate of fatalities and costs. Considering that the human factor plays an important role it is obvious that there is great interest in predicting safe driving performance in professional drivers, especially with new technologies emerging to assist drivers. This study uses a modern theoretical framework to assess which psychometric tests are still able to predict safe driving performance in today’s professional drivers under these new circumstances. 126 male professional bus drivers completed a standardized digital test battery and three driving exercises. The test battery was used to assess reaction time, concentration, ability to gain an overview, reactive stress tolerance, logical reasoning, and safety-related personality traits. The exercises consisted of an on-road driving test, an obstacle course, and a maneuvering course. The study yielded satisfactory indicators of criterion related validity. It also showed that different tests were relevant for the prediction of safe driving performance in different driving exercises. Contrary to previous research, logical reasoning showed significant effects. The results indicate that in order to assess safe driving performance in professional drivers, a comprehensive assessment with psychometric tests should be recommended.

Psychosocial risk assessment by midwives during antenatal care: a focus on psychosocial support

Abstract: The rationale of any national screening programme is to recognize the benefits for public health, to test a predominantly healthy population including low risk pregnant women, and to detect risk factors for morbidity in order to provide timely care interventions. The South African health care system faces many challenges that undoubtedly impact on maternal health, resulting in poor quality of care and indirectly causing maternal deaths. The government has embarked on a number of initiatives that address women’s psychosocial wellbeing during pregnancy, for example free maternity care, legalizing abortion, expanding on provider-initiated HIV counseling and testing for antenatal patients. These initiatives imply a re-look at antenatal care screening, in order to identify wider determinants of health that may have an impact on a woman’s psychosocial wellbeing. This includes amongst others, poor socio-economic conditions such as poverty, lack of social support, general health inequalities, domestic violence and a history of either personal or familial mental illness, all of which have the capacity to influence a pregnant woman’s decision to utilize health care services. The intention of this study was therefore to establish the extent of psychosocial risk assessment for pregnant women during antenatal care, with a focus on the psychosocial support.Ethical clearance was obtained from the University of the Witwatersrand Human Research Ethics Committee (Protocol no. M081013). A mixed-method approach was applied through combining quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods and approaches to address psychosocial risk assessment and psychosocial support by midwives during antenatal care. An explanatory sequential design was used. The methodology was aimed at accommodating the diverse population involved in the study, the nature of data being sought and the number of investigations conducted. A fully mixed research approach was implemented interactively through all the stages of the study. The study took place in six phases to meet the purpose of this research. Phase 1 entailed quantitative data collection and analysis; phase 2 qualitative data collection and analysis; phase 3 report writing; phase 4 formulation of guidelines; phase 5 pilot test; phase 6 integration of results and findings, and writing of final report.

Effects of psychological inoculation on indirect road hostility and simulated driving

Abstract: Traffic accidents (TA) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Psychological risk factors, whether traits or states, are important predictors of dangerous driving and of TA. However, educational and awareness campaigns often have little impact on such factors since they do not provide social resistance skills or cognitive restructuring, to change cognitive distortions which may underlie such factors. This research tested the effects of psychological inoculation (PI), a cognitive method that challenges and modifies cognitive distortions and teaches social resistance skills, on road hostility tendencies, using an indirect measure (Studies 1 and 2), and on simulated driving (Study 3). We preliminarily validated an indirect measure of road hostility tendencies, using a semi-projective test, not relying on interpretation or self-report. In Study 1, 59 Belgian students were assessed for indirect road hostility tendencies, before and immediately after PI or an awareness control. Indirect road hostility tendencies significantly decreased only in the PI group. In Study 2, 59 Israeli police cadets received PI or driving safety education (control) in groups. Levels of road hostility tendencies were significantly lower in the PI group than in controls, only immediately after the intervention, but not two weeks later. In Study 3, 40 male students were observed for brief PC-based simulated driving with social pressure, before and after PI or safety education (control). Only PI led to reduced accidents and touching/passing sidewalks from pre- to post-intervention. These relatively consistent results support the effectiveness of PI for reducing road hostility tendencies and accidents in simulated driving. Future studies need to test the long-term impact of PI on actual driving behavior. The ease of administering PI en-masse and its effects on road hostility tendencies and on simulated driving behavior may have important implications for accident prevention.

Prediction Method of Driver’s Propensity Adapted to Driver’s Dynamic Feature Extraction of Affection

Abstract: Driver’s propensity is a dynamic measurement of driver’s characteristics, such as affection and preference. In the vehicle driver-assistance system, especially its collision warning subsystem, it is also an important parameter of computing driver's intention. The prediction of driver’s propensity from relative static and macroscopic perspective is an essential precondition for further researching and extracting dynamic characteristics. Physiology and psychology tests are designed to measure driver’s character and calculate physiological rhythm. Changing data of driver’s psychology and emotion during driving are obtained by real vehicle test. Then driver’s propensity values of different types are calculated by weighting method according to the contribution rate of standard features. Results show that this method is better than the traditional psychology test, and it provides a basis for further studying dynamic characteristics of driver’s affection.