Car, parce que, puisque’ revisited: Three empirical studies on French causal connectives

In French, a causal relation is often conveyed by the connectives car, parce que or puisque. Since the seminal work of the Lambda-l Group (1975), it has generally been assumed that parce que, used to relate semantic content, contrasts with car and puisque, both used to connect either speech act or epistemic content. However, this analysis leaves a number of questions unanswered. In this paper, I present a reanalysis of this trio, using empirical methods such as corpus analysis and constrained elicitation. Results indicate that car and parce que are interchangeable in many contexts, even if they are still prototypically used in their respective domain in writing. As for puisque, its distribution does not overlap with car, despite their similar domains of use. I argue that the specificity of puisque with respect to the other two connectives is to introduce a cause with an echoic meaning.

Putting Up a Big Front: Car Design and Size Affect Road-Crossing Behaviour

Previous research suggests that people tend to see faces in car fronts and that they attribute personality characteristics to car faces. In the present study we investigated whether car design influences pedestrian road-crossing behaviour. An immersive virtual reality environment with a zebra crossing scenario was used to determine a) whether the minimum accepted distance for crossing the street is larger for cars with a dominant appearance than for cars with a friendly appearance and b) whether the speed of dominant-looking cars is overestimated as compared to friendly-looking cars. Participants completed both tasks while either standing on the pavement or on the centre island. We found that people started to cross the road later in front of friendly-looking low-power cars compared to dominant-looking high-power cars, but only if the cars were relatively large in size. For small cars we found no effect of power. The speed of smaller cars was estimated to be higher compared to large cars (size-speed bias). Furthermore, there was an effect of starting position: From the centre island, participants entered the road significantly later (i. e. closer to the approaching car) and left the road later than when starting from the pavement. Similarly, the speed of the cars was estimated significantly lower when standing on the centre island compared to the pavement. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that car fronts elicit responses on a behavioural level.

Virtual car accidents of epilepsy patients, interictal epileptic activity, and medication.

OBJECTIVE To investigate effects of interictal epileptic activity (IEA) and antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) on reactivity and aspects of the fitness to drive for epilepsy patients. METHODS Forty-six adult patients with demonstration of focal or generalized bursts of IEA in electroencephalography (EEG) readings within 1 year prior to inclusion irrespective of medication performed a car driving computer test or a single light flash test (39 patients performed both). Reaction times (RTs), virtual crashes, or lapses (RT ≥ 1 s in the car or flash test) were measured in an IEA burst-triggered fashion during IEA and compared with RT-measurements during unremarkable EEG findings in the same session. RESULTS IEA prolonged RTs both in the flash and car test (p < 0.001) in individual patients up to 200 ms. Generalized IEA with spike/waves (s/w) had the largest effect on RT prolongation (p < 0.001, both tests), whereas mean RT during normal EEG, age, gender, and number of AEDs had no effect. The car test was better than the flash test in detecting RT prolongations (p = 0.030). IEA increased crashes/lapses >26% in sessions with generalized IEA with s/w. The frequency of IEA-associated RT >1 s exceeded predictions (p < 0.001) based on simple RT shift, suggesting functional impairment beyond progressive RT prolongation by IEA. The number of AEDs correlated with prolonged RTs during normal EEG (p < 0.021) but not with IEA-associated RT prolongation or crashes/lapses. SIGNIFICANCE IEA prolonged RTs to varying extents, dependent on IEA type. IEA-associated RTs >1 s were more frequent than predicted, suggesting beginning cerebral decompensation of visual stimulus processing. AEDs somewhat reduced psychomotor speed, but it was mainly the IEA that contributed to an excess of virtual accidents.