Item individuation, tracking, and tasks that involve visual-motor coordination

无论你是在开车回家时穿过拥挤的车流左转，还是在打曲棍球时监视队友和冰球的位置，或者是在硬币向四面八方滚动时捕捉掉落的硬币，还是只是为了不在你离开拥挤的礼堂时失去孩子，有时你需要同时跟踪几个移动物品的位置。这种能力被称为多目标跟踪。在正常情况下，年轻人一次可以追踪3-5个移动的物体，尽管这种能力随着年龄的增长而下降。多目标跟踪可以预测各种情况，从老年司机的撞车风险到精英运动员的表现。它似乎与视觉-运动协调有关，但为什么是相关的？多目标跟踪实际上是协同行动的一部分吗？或者，这种关系的产生是因为多目标跟踪和视觉协调行动利用了一种共同的有限资源--一般注意力--一种在所有感官和所有认知任务之间共享的资源，甚至是那些不需要公开行动的资源(例如，思考一天的事件)。注意力有与年龄相关的变化。这就是为什么老年人不能一次追踪这么多人的原因吗？这些问题的答案对于理解与年龄相关的缺陷和设计有效的干预措施来克服这些缺陷都是相关的。这项研究将研究多目标跟踪与两个协调任务的关系：视觉引导触摸和驾驶汽车。我们将调查年轻人和老年人(18-25岁，65岁以上)的表现。为了测量视觉引导的触觉，我们将让参与者试图在触摸屏上“捕捉”特定的移动物品。视觉上协调的转向、车头间隔和碰撞避免将使用驾驶模拟器来测量，驾驶模拟器是一种被观察屏包围的汽车，司机可以沉浸在虚拟现实驾驶环境中。我们将比较驾驶方式的变化与认知任务的复杂性，以及它随着跟踪负载的增加而变化的方式(一次跟踪的车辆数量)。我们还将确定，与司机静止时相比，当司机经历刺激前庭和躯体感觉系统的真实运动时，这些影响是否更强。这对于了解在年轻人和老年人的协调行动中，视觉与前庭和躯体感觉系统之间如何分享注意力是很重要的。这些信息对于理解跌倒至关重要，跌倒是老年人的严重健康风险。鉴于我们将调查驾驶，这项研究还将提供有助于减少汽车碰撞的信息，汽车碰撞是加拿大伤亡的主要原因。碰撞可能发生在任何年龄，但老年人更有可能因此死亡或遭受严重伤害。如果驾驶涉及多目标跟踪，那么多目标跟踪培训可能会降低老年人的碰撞风险。

Whether you are turning left across busy traffic as you drive home, monitoring the positions of your teammates and the puck as you play hockey, capturing dropped coins as they roll away in all directions, or simply trying not to lose your children as you exit a crowded auditorium, there are times when you need to keep track of the positions of several moving items at once. This ability is called multiple-object tracking. Under normal conditions, young adults can track 3-5 moving items at once, though this ability declines with age. Multiple-object tracking predicts things as diverse as crash risk in older drivers to performance in elite athletes. It seems to be related to visual-motor coordination, but why is it related? Is multiple-object tracking actually part of coordinated action? Or does the relationship occur because multiple-object tracking and visually coordinated action draw upon a common limited resource -- general attention -- a resource shared between all senses and with all cognitive tasks, even ones that do not require overt actions (e.g. thinking about the day's events). There are age-related changes in attention. Is this why older adults cannot track as many at once? The answers to these questions are relevant both to understanding age-related deficits and designing effective interventions to overcome them. This research will involve studying the relationship between multiple-object tracking and two coordinated tasks: visually guided touch and driving an automobile. We will be investigating performance in young and older adults (18-25 years, 65+ years). To measure visually guided touch, we will have participants trying to "catch" specific moving items among others on a touch screen. Visually coordinated steering, headway, and collision avoidance will be measured using a driving simulator, a car surrounded by viewing screens that immerse drivers in a virtual reality driving environment. We will compare the way that driving changes with the complexity of a cognitive task with the way it changes as tracking load increases (the number of vehicles tracked at once). We will also determine if these effects are stronger when the driver experiences real motion, which stimulates both the vestibular and somatosensory systems, as compared to when the driver is static. This is important to learning how attention is shared between vision and the vestibular and somatosensory systems during coordinated action in young and older adults. Such information is critical to understanding falls, which are a serious health-risk in older adults. Given that we will be investigating driving, this research will also provide information useful in reducing automobile collisions, a leading cause of injury and death in Canada. Collisions can occur at any age but older adults are more likely to die or sustain serious injury as result. If driving involves multiple-object tracking, then multiple-object tracking training may reduce collision risk for older adults.