EXPANSION OF THE USEFUL FIELD OF VIEW--LINKS TO DRIVING PERFORMANCE

这是老年人维持体力所需要的关键技能之一

One of the critical skills which the elderly need in order to maintain their mobility is the ability to drive safely. Until recently, little has been known about which factors discriminate those elderly drivers who are at risk for crashes from those who are not at risk. Recent work on the Useful Field of View (UFOV) has demonstrated a strong correlational link between the size of the UFOV and prior five year crash histories of older adults. The size of the UFOV was also found to be predictive of crash involvement in the year following assessment with nine times more accidents in a high risk group of older drivers relative to their low risk counterparts. Furthermore, the UFOV, unlike many cognitive skills which decline with age, is amenable to training. Prior work has shown that the UFOV may be expanded anywhere from 60% to as much as 300% in older adults in a relatively brief amount of time and that this training lasts at least one year without further training. Although the size of the UFOV is related to accident frequency, the consequences of improving the UFOV on future accident frequency is unknown. This project is one of two projects in the proposed center which will attempt to determine those consequences. In this project elderly drivers deemed to be at-risk because of UFOV reduction will receive UFOV training so that their performance is equivalent to that of low-risk drivers (UFOV less than 40). A matched group of untrained high-risk drivers and a group of low-risk drivers will be monitored along with the trained participants. The outcome driving measure used in this project will be a high fidelity driving simulator which will permit the examination of the transfer of trained attentional skills to the attentional components of the driving task. In addition, the accident frequency and general mobility of the participants will be monitored over the course of the project. The relationship of these findings to those of the field measures obtained in Project I will help to provide converging evidence toward an understanding of the nature and benefits of UFOV training for actual driving. Furthermore, the transfer of UFOV training to other cognitive tasks, particularly negative priming, will be examined. Thus, at the same time that transfer of UFOV training to driving is being assessed, the project will permit an examination of some of the theoretical mechanisms which may underlie this transfer.