Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2018 Sep 6;13(9):e0203549. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203549. eCollection 2018.
Young adults demonstrate a small, but consistent, asymmetry of spatial attention favouring the left side of space ("pseudoneglect") in laboratory-based tests of perception. Conversely, in more naturalistic environments, behavioural errors towards the right side of space are often observed. In the older population, spatial attention asymmetries are generally diminished, or even reversed to favour the right side of space, but much of this evidence has been gained from lab-based and/or psychophysical testing. In this study we assessed whether spatial biases can be elicited during a simulated driving task, and secondly whether these biases also shift with age, in line with standard lab-based measures. Data from 77 right-handed adults with full UK driving licences (i.e. prior experience of left-lane driving) were analysed: 38 young (mean age = 21.53) and 39 older adults (mean age = 70.38). Each participant undertook 3 tests of visuospatial attention: the landmark task, line bisection task, and a simulated lane-keeping task. We found leftward biases in young adults for the landmark and line bisection tasks, indicative of pseudoneglect, and a mean lane position towards the right of centre. In young adults the leftward landmark task biases were negatively correlated with rightward lane-keeping biases, hinting that a common property of the spatial attention networks may have influenced both tasks. As predicted, older adults showed no group-level spatial asymmetry on the landmark nor the line bisection task, but they maintained a mean rightward lane position, similar to young adults. The 3 tasks were not inter-correlated in the older group. These results suggest that spatial biases in older adults may be elicited more effectively in experiments involving complex behaviour rather than abstract, lab-based measures. More broadly, these results confirm that lateral biases of spatial attention are linked to driving behaviour, and this could prove informative in the development of future vehicle safety and driving technology.
年轻人在基于实验室的感知测试中表现出微小但一致的空间注意力不对称，偏向左侧空间（“假性忽视”）。相反，在更自然的环境中，经常观察到向右侧空间的行为错误。在老年人群中，空间注意力不对称通常会减弱，甚至反转到偏向右侧空间，但这些证据大多来自基于实验室的和/或心理物理测试。在这项研究中，我们评估了在模拟驾驶任务中是否可以引起空间偏差，其次，这些偏差是否也会随着年龄的增长而变化，与基于实验室的标准测量结果一致。我们分析了 77 名拥有英国完整驾照的右撇子成年人的数据（即有过左侧车道驾驶经验）：38 名年轻人（平均年龄=21.53 岁）和 39 名老年人（平均年龄=70.38 岁）。每个参与者都进行了 3 项视空间注意力测试：地标任务、线二分任务和模拟车道保持任务。我们发现，年轻人在地标和线二分任务中存在左偏，表明存在假性忽视，并且平均车道位置偏向右侧。在年轻人中，左向地标任务偏差与向右车道保持偏差呈负相关，暗示空间注意力网络的共同特性可能同时影响了这两个任务。正如预测的那样，老年人在地标和线二分任务中没有表现出组水平的空间不对称，但他们保持了类似于年轻人的向右车道位置。在老年人组中，这 3 个任务之间没有相关性。这些结果表明，在涉及复杂行为而不是抽象的基于实验室的测量的实验中，老年人的空间偏差可能更容易被激发。更广泛地说，这些结果证实了空间注意力的侧偏与驾驶行为有关，这可能为未来车辆安全和驾驶技术的发展提供信息。
