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Background It has been suggested that resilience may be a protective factor with respect to mental illness. This may be an important factor for those who are vulnerable to psychiatric illness. Thus, the aims of this paper were to compare levels of resilience between individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis and healthy controls, and to examine associations between resilience and clinical measures, functioning, and trauma of CHR participants. Method Eighty participants, 40 CHR and 40 University of Calgary undergraduate students, completed two resilience questionnaires: the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and the Child and Youth Resilience Measure. Results A t-test revealed a significant difference between the groups on levels of resilience (t=4.34, p <0.01), demonstrating that CHR participants have lower levels of resilience than healthy controls. In terms of the associations between resilience and measures of mental health of CHR participants, it was found that higher levels of resilience were related to lower negative symptoms, depression, and anxiety. Furthermore, resilient CHR participants showed higher levels of role functioning and generally reported higher positive schemas of self and others, as well as lower stress to reported life events. No associations were found between resilience and attenuated psychotic symptoms, social functioning, IQ, and trauma. Conclusions The results of the current study suggest that resilience may be beneficial to other mental issues present in CHR individuals but this may not be the case for attenuated psychotic symptoms.

Driver distraction significantly impairs performance and increases the likelihood of vehicle crashes. Understanding the underlying reasons of distraction engagement as well as individuals' susceptibility to different types of distractions is a necessary step to develop effective solutions to mitigate distraction. This paper describes the development and initial evaluation of a questionnaire, the Susceptibility to Driver Distraction Questionnaire (SDDQ), which investigates distraction involvement by making a distinction between voluntary and involuntary engagement in secondary activities, or distractions as referred to in this paper. We present the theoretical underpinnings, the questionnaire itself, as well as the results of an online survey examining the reliability and validity of the newly developed questionnaire. Our analyses show moderate to high levels of internal consistency among the questionnaire items, providing support to the reliability of SDDQ. Our results also suggest that selfreported engagement in driver distraction is correlated with other self-reported unsafe driving behaviors. As expected, personality is associated with attitudes and beliefs that motivate voluntary engagement in distraction, while susceptibility to involuntary distraction is related to cognitive limitations. These results indicate that SDDQ can potentially be a useful tool to study driver distraction and the underlying reasons of distraction engagement.3

Despite increased media attention and legislation banning some forms of cell phone use while driving, drivers continue to engage in illegal cell phone distractions. Several studies have used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain why drivers voluntarily engage in cell phone distractions, and found that TPB constructs (attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioral control) predict intentions to engage in cell phone distractions while driving. Given that cell phone use is ubiquitous, habits that have formed around their general use may lead to automatic engagement in cell phone distractions while driving. This differs from voluntary engagement, in that habits are carried out automatically, with little thought given to the action or its consequences. Thus, in addition to the TPB constructs that explain intentions, habitual factors should also be considered in understanding why drivers use cell phones. A few studies have examined the role of habits in this context, but they only focused on texting behaviors. An online survey was conducted with 227 respondents to investigate the role of habitual cell phone use in driver engagement in a variety of illegal cell phone tasks (e.g., social media, email). Habitual cell phone use was found to explain unique variance in self-reported engagement after controlling for TPB constructs. Overall, the findings indicate that cell-phone-related distractions may not be entirely voluntary; instead, cell phone habits developed outside of the driving context appear to have a significant effect, suggesting that cell phone use while driving may have become automatic to a certain extent.