Yes / Accurate time perception is critical for a number of human behaviours, such as understanding speech and the appreciation of music. However, it remains unresolved whether sensory time perception is mediated by a central timing component regulating all senses, or by a set of distributed mechanisms, each dedicated to a single sensory modality and operating in a largely independent manner. To address this issue, we conducted a range of unimodal and cross-modal rate adaptation experiments, in order to establish the degree of specificity of classical after-effects of sensory adaptation. Adapting to a fast rate of sensory stimulation typically makes a moderate rate appear slower (repulsive after-effect), and vice versa. A central timing hypothesis predicts general transfer of adaptation effects across modalities, whilst distributed mechanisms predict a high degree of sensory selectivity. Rate perception was quantified by a method of temporal reproduction across all combinations of visual, auditory and tactile senses. Robust repulsive after-effects were observed in all unimodal rate conditions, but were not observed for any cross-modal pairings. Our results show that sensory timing abilities are adaptable but, crucially, that this change is modality-specific - an outcome that is consistent with a distributed sensory timing hypothesis.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Civil Engineering / Sunanda Dissanayake / Lane-departure crashes are the most predominant crash type in Kansas which causes very high number of motor vehicle fatalities. Therefore, the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) has implemented several different types of countermeasures to reduce the number of motor vehicle fatalities associated with lane-departure crashes. This research was conducted to estimate the safety effectiveness of commonly used lane-departure countermeasures in Kansas on all crashes and lane-departure crashes using Crash Modification Factors (CMFs). Paved shoulders, rumble strips, safety edge treatments and median cable barriers were identified as the commonly used lane-departure countermeasures on both tangent and curved road segments while chevrons and post-mounted delineators were identified as the most commonly used lane-departure countermeasures on curved road segments. This research proposes a state-of-art method of estimating CMFs using cross-sectional data for chevrons and post-mounted delineators. Furthermore, another state-of-art method is proposed in this research to estimate CMFs for safety edge treatments using before-and-after data. Considering the difficulties of finding the exact date of implementation of each countermeasure, both cross-sectional and before-and-after studies were employed to estimate the CMFs. Cross-sectional and case-control methods, which are the two major methods in cross-sectional studies were employed to estimate CMFs for paved shoulders, rumble strips, and median cable barriers. The conventional cross-sectional and case-control methods were modified when estimating CMFs for chevrons and post-mounted delineators by incorporating environmental and human behaviors in addition to geometric and traffic-related explanatory variables. The proposed method is novel and has not been used in the previous cross-sectional models available in the literature. Generalized linear regression models assuming negative binomial error structure were used to develop models for cross-sectional method to estimate CMFs while logistic regression models were used to estimate CMFs using case-control method. Results showed that incorporating environmental and human-related variables into cross-sectional models provide better model fit than in conventional cross-sectional models. To validate the developed models for cross-sectional method, mean of the residuals and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were used. For the case-control method, Receiver Operational Characteristic (ROC) was used to evaluate the predictive power of models for a binary outcome using classification tables. However, it was seen that the case-control method is not suitable for estimating CMFs for all crashes since the range of the crash frequency is wide in each road segment. A regression-based method of estimating CMFs using before-and-after data was proposed to estimate CMFs for safety edge treatments. This method allows researchers to identify the safety effectiveness of an individual CMFs on road segments where multiple treatments have been applied at the same time. Since this method uses road geometric and traffic-related characteristics in addition to countermeasure information as the explanatory variables, the model itself would be the Safety Performance Function (SPF). Therefore, developing new SPF is not necessary. Finally, the CMFs were estimated using before-and-after Empirical Bayes method to validate the results from the regression-based method. The results of this study can be used as a decision-making tool when implementing lane-departure countermeasures on similar roadways in Kansas. Even though there are readily available CMFs from the national level studies, having more localized CMFs will be beneficial due to differences in traffic-related and geometric characteristics on different roadways.

La conduite d’un véhicule industriel est une activité professionnelle complexe qui s’exerce dans un environnement dynamique en constante évolution. Elle nécessite un apprentissage spécifique et se situe dans un cadre réglementaire strict, qui relève aussi bien du code du travail que de la réglementation routière. A ces caractéristiques s’ajoutent de fortes contraintes spatio-temporelles qui imposent aux conducteurs le recours à des stratégies opératoires pour répondre à l’objectif principal de leur activité : le respect des délais de livraison dans des conditions optimales de sécurité, de sûreté et de productivité.Cette thèse traite de l'apport de la psychologie cognitive à la conception de systèmes d'assistance à la conduite de véhicules industriels. Les travaux sont destinés à intégrer, dès la conception des nouveaux systèmes, les contraintes du fonctionnement cognitif humain en situation réelle, ainsi que les besoins et attentes des conducteurs, afin que leur soient proposées des solutions technologiques adaptées et utilisables.La partie appliquée illustre deux dimensions majeures de l'activité de conduite d'un camion : la productivité, au travers de la problématique de l'assistance à l'éco-conduite (projet Conduite Economique Assistée, ADEME- RENAULT TRUCKS) ; la sécurité, au travers de la problématique de l'assistance à la détection et à la protection des usagers vulnérables de la route (projet VIVRE2, ANR-PREDIT05-LUTB).D’un point de vue scientifique, la thèse aboutit à la proposition d’un modèle du fonctionnement humain dans les activités finalisées, complété par un modèle adapté à l’activité de conduite d’un véhicule industriel. Les analyses effectuées en situations réelles enrichissent les connaissances, d’une part, sur les stratégies de conduite appliquées à la conduite rationnelle d’un poids lourd en environnement extra-urbain, et, d’autre part, sur les composantes de l’activité des conducteurs qui effectuent des livraisons en milieu urbain. De plus, les travaux effectués dans le cadre du projet VIVRE2 ont permis de préciser les représentations et les comportements à risque des usagers vulnérables vis-à-vis des camions en ville.D’un point de vue applicatif et ergonomique, les travaux sur simulateur dynamique de conduite ont permis l’évaluation d’une interface homme-machine innovante qui pourrait être adaptée à l’éco-conduite, ainsi que la proposition et l’évaluation de systèmes d’assistance pour garantir la sécurité des usagers vulnérables lors des manœuvres à basse vitesse en milieu urbain. / Driving a truck is a complex professional activity that takes place in a dynamic and constant changing environment. It needs a specific learning and it is set in a strict regulated framework including French labour code (Code du travail) as road regulation. Strong spatio-temporal pressure should be added to those characteristics. These constraints entail to drivers the use of operative strategies to achieve the main objective of their activity: respect of delivery time in optimal conditions of safety, security and productivity.This thesis deals with the contribution of cognitive psychology to the design of driving assistance systems for trucks. Works are intended to integrate, from the design of new systems, the demands of human cognitive functioning in real situation and the needs and expectations of drivers so that adapted and usable technological solutions could be proposed to them.Applied part shows two major dimensions of truck driving activity: productivity through the issue of the eco-driving assistance (“Conduite Economique Assistée, ADEME- RENAULT TRUCKS” project) and safety through the issue of the assistance to detection and protection of vulnerable road users (“VIVRE2, ANR-PREDIT05-LUTB” project).From a scientific point of view, the thesis ends with a proposal of a model of human functioning in finalized activities, of which is added an adapted model of the truck driving activity. The analysis performed in real environment enhance knowledge, on the one hand, on the applied driving strategies to the eco-driving of a truck in extra-urban environment and, on the other hand, on the components of the activity of drivers doing deliveries in urban environment. Moreover, works performed in VIVRE2 project allowed to specify representations and risky behaviours of vulnerable users with relation to trucks in town.From an applicative and ergonomic point of view, works on driving dynamic simulator allowed the evaluation of an innovative man-machine interface which could be adapted to eco-driving and the proposal as well as the evaluation of assistance systems to guarantee safety of vulnerable users during low speed manoeuvres in urban environment.