Older adults are overrepresented in fatal crashes on a per mile basis. Those with useful field of view (UFOV) reductions show particularly elevated crash risk. To evaluate cross-modal alerting parameters for orienting to external targets in attention impaired drivers, we applied a variation of Posners orienting of attention paradigm. Twenty-nine older drivers with UFOV impairments and 32 older drivers without impairments participated. Alerts were presented in either a single modality or a combination of modalities (visual, auditory, haptic). Four cue types (valid, invalid, neutral, uncued) were employed. Following each cue, drivers discriminated the direction of a target (a Landolt square with a gap facing up or down) in the visual panorama. Drivers with and without UFOV impairments showed comparable response times (RTs) across the different cue types and alert modalities. Both groups benefited most from auditory and auditory/haptic alerts. Overall, drivers responded faster when cued. The results suggest that temporal aspects of cue presentation dominate spatial aspects of cues in their ability to speed responses to external targets. The combination of a cognitive science approach in a driving simulator environment provides a fruitful method for examining how different alerts influence speed of processing and attention in at risk drivers in actual automobiles.
Monica N. Lees Joshua Cosman John D. Lee Shaun P. Vecera Mijin Jang Jeffrey D. Dawson Matthew Rizzo
Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, University of Iowa, United States Center for Co Department of Neurology, University of Iowa, United States Department of Psychology, University of I Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, University of Iowa, United States Public Policy Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, United States Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa, United States Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, University of Iowa, United States Department of