Brouwer W H, Waterink W, Van Wolffelaar P C, Rothengatter T
University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Hum Factors. 1991 Oct;33(5):573-82. doi: 10.1177/001872089103300508.
A simulated driving task that required the simultaneous execution of two continuous visual tasks was administered to 12 healthy young (mean age 26.1 years) and 12 healthy older (mean age 64.4 years) experienced and currently active drivers. The first task was a compensatory lane-tracking task involving a three-dimensional road display. The second task was a timed, self-paced visual analysis task involving either a vocal or manual binary response to dot patterns projected within the road display. Using adaptive tasks, single-task difficulty was individually adjusted for each subject. To control for individual differences in attention allocation strategy, the dual task was performed according to three different sets of instructions based on the relative importance of each task. Compared with young adults, older adults showed a significantly decreased ability to divide attention. This effect was apparent in lane tracking and in the accuracy of visual analysis. The impairment of divided attention was less pronounced in the vocal condition than in the manual one. This suggests that difficulty in integrating responses may be an important determinant of poor dual-task performance in old age.
对12名健康的年轻（平均年龄26.1岁）和12名健康的年长（平均年龄64.4岁）且目前仍在积极驾驶的有经验的驾驶员进行了一项模拟驾驶任务，该任务要求同时执行两项连续的视觉任务。第一项任务是涉及三维道路显示的补偿性车道跟踪任务。第二项任务是一项有时间限制、自我节奏的视觉分析任务，涉及对道路显示内投射的点状图案进行语音或手动二元反应。使用自适应任务，为每个受试者单独调整单任务难度。为了控制注意力分配策略的个体差异，根据每项任务的相对重要性，按照三组不同的指令执行双重任务。与年轻人相比，老年人的注意力分配能力显著下降。这种影响在车道跟踪和视觉分析的准确性方面都很明显。在语音条件下，注意力分散的损害不如手动条件下明显。这表明整合反应的困难可能是老年人双重任务表现不佳的一个重要决定因素。
