Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Jul;43(4):768-76.
doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2011.11.012. Epub 2011 Dec 26.

Cross-modal warnings for orienting attention in older drivers with and without attention impairments

Monica N Lees  1 , Joshua Cosman, John D Lee, Shaun P Vecera, Jeffrey D Dawson, Matthew Rizzo
Affiliations

Cross-modal warnings for orienting attention in older drivers with and without attention impairments

Monica N Lees et al. Appl Ergon. 2012 Jul.

Abstract

Older adults are overrepresented in fatal crashes on a per-mile basis. Those with useful field of view (UFOV) reductions show a particularly elevated crash risk that might be mitigated with vehicle-based warnings. To evaluate cross-modal cues that could be used in these warnings, we applied a variation of Posner's orienting of attention paradigm. Twenty-nine older drivers with UFOV impairments and 32 older drivers without impairments participated. Cues were presented in either a single modality or a combination of modalities (visual, auditory, haptic). Drivers experienced three cue types (valid spatial information, invalid spatial information, neutral) and an uncued baseline. 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 modalities and cue types. Both groups benefited most from auditory and auditory/haptic cues. Redundant visual cues, when paired with auditory cues, undermined performance rather than enhanced it. Overall, drivers responded faster to targets with valid spatial information followed by neutral, invalid, and uncued targets. Cues provide the greatest benefit in alerting rather than orienting the driver. The cue expected to be most effective at orienting attention - the extra-vehicular cue - performs most poorly when the spatial information is either invalid or neutral. Even when the spatial information is valid the extra-vehicular cue underperforms the auditory cues. The results suggest that temporal information dominates spatial information in the ability of cues to speed responses to targets. This study represents a first step in assessing whether combining a cognitive science paradigm and a driving simulator environment can quickly assess how different warning signals alert and orient drivers.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 3
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Ball K, Owsley C. Identifying correlates of accident involvement for the older driver. Human Factors. 1991;33(5):583–595. - PubMed
    1. Ball K, Owsley C. The useful field of view test: A new technique for evaluating age-related declines in visual function. Journal of the American Optometric Association. 1993;64:71–79. - PubMed
    1. Bedard M, Guyatt GH, Stones MJ, Hirdes JP. The independent contribution of driver, crash, and vehicle characteristics to driver fatalities. Accident Analysis and Prevention. 2002;34(6):717–727. - PubMed
    1. Bliss JP, Acton SA. Alarm mistrust in automobiles: how collision alarm reliability affects driving. Applied Ergonomics. 2003;34:499–509. - PubMed
    1. Cosman JD, Lees MN, Lee JD, Vecera SP, Rizzo M. Age-related useful field of view impairments are associated with an inefficient ability to shift attention in space. Psychology and Aging (Submitted)

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources