Feng Jing, Choi HeeSun, Craik Fergus I M, Levine Brian, Moreno Sylvain, Naglie Gary, Zhu Motao
a Department of Psychology , North Carolina State University , Raleigh , North Carolina.
b Rotman Research Institute , Baycrest Health Sciences , Toronto , Ontario , Canada.
Traffic Inj Prev. 2018 Feb 17;19(2):141-146. doi: 10.1080/15389588.2017.1373190. Epub 2017 Nov 27.
The majority of existing investigations on attention, aging, and driving have focused on the negative impacts of age-related declines in attention on hazard detection and driver performance. However, driving skills and behavioral compensation may accommodate for the negative effects that age-related attentional decline places on driving performance. In this study, we examined an important question that had been largely neglected in the literature linking attention, aging, and driving: can top-down factors such as behavioral compensation, specifically adaptive response criteria, accommodate the negative impacts from age-related attention declines on hazard detection during driving?
In the experiment, we used the Drive Aware Task, a task combining the driving context with well-controlled laboratory procedures measuring attention. We compared younger (n = 16, age 21-30) and older (n = 21, age 65-79) drivers on their attentional processing of hazards in driving scenes, indexed by percentage of correct responses and reaction time of hazard detection, as well as sensitivity and response criteria using signal detection analysis.
Older drivers, in general, were less accurate and slower on the task than younger drivers. However, results from this experiment revealed that older, but not younger, drivers adapted their response criteria when the traffic condition changed in the driving scenes. When there was more traffic in the driving scene, older drivers became more liberal in their responses, meaning that they were more likely to report that a driving hazard was detected.
Older drivers adopt compensatory strategies for hazard detection during driving. Our findings showed that, in the driving context, even at an older age our attentional functions are still adaptive according to environmental conditions. This leads to considerations on potential training methods to promote adaptive strategies that may help older drivers maintain performance in road hazard detection.
现有的大多数关于注意力、衰老和驾驶的研究都集中在与年龄相关的注意力下降对危险检测和驾驶员表现的负面影响上。然而，驾驶技能和行为补偿可能会抵消与年龄相关的注意力下降对驾驶表现产生的负面影响。在本研究中，我们探讨了一个在将注意力、衰老和驾驶联系起来的文献中基本被忽视的重要问题：诸如行为补偿，特别是适应性反应标准等自上而下的因素，能否抵消与年龄相关的注意力下降对驾驶过程中危险检测的负面影响？
在实验中，我们使用了“驾驶意识任务”，这是一种将驾驶情境与测量注意力的严格控制的实验室程序相结合的任务。我们比较了年轻驾驶员（n = 16，年龄21 - 30岁）和年长驾驶员（n = 21，年龄65 - 79岁）在驾驶场景中对危险的注意力处理情况，指标包括正确反应的百分比、危险检测的反应时间，以及使用信号检测分析得出的敏感性和反应标准。
总体而言，年长驾驶员在任务中的准确性低于年轻驾驶员，反应也更慢。然而，该实验的结果表明，当年长驾驶员在驾驶场景中的交通状况发生变化时，他们会调整自己的反应标准，而年轻驾驶员则不会。当驾驶场景中的交通流量较大时，年长驾驶员的反应变得更加宽松，这意味着他们更有可能报告检测到驾驶危险。
年长驾驶员在驾驶过程中采用了危险检测的补偿策略。我们的研究结果表明，在驾驶情境中，即使年龄较大，我们的注意力功能仍会根据环境条件进行调整。这引发了对潜在训练方法的思考，这些方法可以促进适应性策略，帮助年长驾驶员在道路危险检测中保持良好表现。
