Mining the Generational Curriculum: Through the Years by Argyle Bumanglag,G13 Spring2000 409b

by Jayson Nakasone, G10

by Ike Matsunaga, G11

by Chris Murakami, G6

Welcome everyone to my generations report. Here you will find my generation report, which is basically a review of reports from previous generations. There are a lot of reports done by various generations (click here to see the index), but I tried to focus my search on topics related to driving, since our main focus is the Emotional Intelligence of Drivers.

I chose this report because the subject of gender in driving has been brought up several times in our class discussions. Personally, I don't think there aren't any gender influences in driving (I have bad experiences with both male and female drivers), but I was interested in seeing what other people feel about the subject.

I found this report by simply searching each of the generation web pages. This was the first page I visited, and I found his background to be appealing.

In this report, the author sets out to investigate whether or not gender has an influence on driving styles by researching the postings of students from previous generations. The information presented shows that there are several views on this subject. There are some people who view that gender does have an influence on driving, while there are others who feel that gender does not influence driving styles. The author of the page maintains the view that gender does not influence driving style. The author feels that there are other factors that influence driving, and that existing tests for aggressive driving are biased.

I thought that the evidence presented is very relevant to the topic, but the author did not really sum up all the points presented. Although the author introduces several arguments regarding gender influences in driving, the author does not really answer the question of whether or not gender has an influence on driving style. This is indicative of the fact that perhaps there is very little information available on the topic. I agree with several of his arguments, for instance, his view that there may be other factors, aside from gender, that influence driving. I personally believe that gender does not necessarily influence driving styles. It is true that there are some female drivers who are more reserved and cautious on the road, but there are also male drivers who drive that way. Therefore, maybe an individual's level of emotional intelligence is of greater influence to driving style.

I found another report in the same generation by Carlene Yee. I chose this report because I thought it would be interesting to compare/contrast the reports of a male and a female student. I noticed that the reports were very similar in structure and content. One observation that I made is that Carlene seems to maintain the view that men are more aggressive drivers than women, while Jayson feels that gender does not really influence driving styles. They both present a lot of information, but once again, I feel that both authors do not really sum up all of their points and discuss what all the evidence says about the topic of gender and driving. Instead, they seem to treat each piece of information separately. I think it would have been better if they summarized each piece of evidence, and then make a summary to tie all of the information together in order to fully answer the question. Nevertheless, I praise them for their work because I know that the subject of gender and driving is a very difficult topic.

I chose this report because I have a great interest in music, and have read some information that music may have an influence on things like test performance, mood and even exercise performance. Therefore, when I found this report, I thought it might be interesting to see if there is any evidence that shows that music influences driving behaviors.

Like the previous report, I found this report by simply examining all the generation web pages .(click here to see the index.) This particular report stood out because I was impressed with the content and appearance of the author's report. From an initial observation, it appears that the author really spent a lot of time with the page's design and report content. As I read the report, I found the author's writing style to be interesting and informative.

The author presents different newsgroup postings on the subject of music and driving. From these postings, it is clear that people have different preferences regarding listening to music while driving. Some people find it positive, saying that it helps to keep them awake, etc., while other people say that listening to no music helps them to relax and drive better. Therefore, there may be evidence that music has an effect on driving. The author presents the argument that two factors may be involved: the type of music makes a difference, and music correlates with the speed of driving. Faster music tends to produce feelings and driving behavior in which people drive faster. The author argues that perhaps the reason for this is that music has a physiological effect on drivers. Fast music increases heart rate, which in turn makes a person more excited, and therefore produces faster driving. The author also presents several studies that show the effect of music on our well-being.

I feel that this is one of the best written reports that I've read from the prior generations. The author's thoughts were well organized and everything is clear and concise. I enjoyed the information that he presented because I felt that they were really relevant to the topics that we are studying in class. One of the best things the author does is provide a lot of psychological concepts to try and explain the topic of music and behavior. My view on the topic is that I agree that music has a physiological effect on people. I observed this with myself - I find that different types of music have different effects on my physical and mental states. For example, I find that fast music, like rock and roll, helps to get me up and feeling energized. I used to work for a delivery company, and in my experience, I found that fast music helped to keep me awake and focused on the road. Therefore, I agree that music may have some effect on driving. However, I think that the effect of music on driving is something that can be controlled. In other words, listening to fast music does not necessarily mean that a person will end up driving fast - the person still has to choose to drive fast. Therefore, if music has an effect, I am not sure how strong that effect is. I think it would be really interesting to study what type (if any) influence music has on driving.

I found another report on the topic by a student named Jason Thompson. I found that both reports seem to be similar in structure and content. Jason shares the same ideas as Ike, and believes that different types of music produce different physiological and psychological effect on people. I feel that this generation's reports seems a little more organized compared to the reports from previous generations. One valuable part of these students' reports is that they both provide a summary that ties all of the points they present I find that this makes the subject they are presenting easier to understand. One interesting thing to note is that these students seem to have similar experiences with music and driving. For example, when they describe their experiences with music, most of the students relate their experiences as a child observing their parents. This demonstrates that we start to develop our emotional intelligence, or our views of the world, as little children. That means that perhaps all our driving habits are learned from the observations that we made of our parents driving. This was an experience that I found common in all the students in this generation who investigated the topic of music and driving.

I chose this report because I wanted to learn more about the subject of driving buddies. The whole concept is fairly new to me, so I wanted to know what it's about, how it works, and how effective it is. The subject has been brought up in class a few times, but not really covered into detail, so I wanted to find out what it's all about for myself.

I work with Chris at the Bekesy bee lab, so I was surprised when he told me that he had taken the traffic psychology class a couple of semesters ago. Chris is an intelligent guy, so I wanted to see what kinds of reports he had (mainly to steal ideas...hehehe). Seriously, I was looking for ways to improve on my web page, so I decided to pay his web page a visit.

Chris begins his report by providing the statistics of motor vehicle crashes in the United States. The numbers are surprisingly large, which suggests the need to implement programs to help improve our society's driving behavior. He then goes on to define what an aggressive driver is. He defines the term as, "individuals whose road behavior is dictated by what they are feeling and thinking in regards to the stimuli that the driving experience presents." Next, Chris describes two methods for altering aggressive driving behaviors - driving buddies and a driver personality makeover.

The heart of his report involves the description of an experiment in which the use of a driving buddy was implemented. From the info. provided, I am assuming that Chris was the driving buddy. He does not really give a detailed description of the driver (to maintain anonimity), but he does tell us that the driver is a college student with a flawless driving record. The experiment was conducted over a period of two days and observations where recorded to see whether or not changes in behavior were made. The rest of the report details the the observations that he recorded over the two day experiment, and Chris also includes suggestions for improving the driver's driving ability.

The results of this experiment demonstrate the effectiveness of driving buddies. The driver in the experiment showed signs of aggressive driving behavior and failed to accept the suggestions made by the driving buddy at first. Nevertheless, at the end of the experiment, the driver was more accepting of his errors and agreed to make an effort to change his aggressive driving behaviors. I enjoyed reading this report and liked Chris' writing style. The report in itself was thorough and not too lengthy, which made concentrating on the concepts a lot easier. However, my ideas on this report may be a little biased since I know Chris from working with him at the bee lab. After reading this report, I now have a better idea of what a driving buddy is all about. I must say that I can respect people who can be effective driving buddies. Personally, I don't think I would make a good driving buddy because I still have too many aggressive driving tendencies (especially in traffic.) To be an effective driving buddy, I think that a person needs to be aware of what non-aggressive driving is and also what the proper driving procedures are. Only after this requirements have been met can a driving buddy be an effective tool for change.

I searched for other reports on this topic and found a report by Kyle Saiki of generation 12. I was surprised to see that the results seemed consistent between the two reports. There are certain areas where one report is better than the other. Kyle Saiki provides a lot of detail on what the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor results are for his experiment. Chris, on the other hand, provides a more detailed account of what occured in his experiment. I liked Chris' descriptions better because it told a story. His writing style flowed well and I was able to visualize what was going on. Aesthetically, I think they could have tried to include a few more images in their reports just to make it look good. This probably a personal preference, but I for one, prefer reading visually appealing web pages with pictures (maybe that's just me.) One final comment is that despite being a summer class, I felt that the reports from G6 were well done. I know what kind of time it takes to complete these projects, so I have to give some respect for those students who were able to complete the course over the summer session.