Traffic scene related change blindness in older drivers Professor: Liu Student: Ruby

Motive & purpose Motive –Most people can’t find the difference when the environment is changed, especially in the older people. Purpose –They want to know that does the driver’s age can affect the detection of change in driving related images.

Reference AuthorsYearResult Simons et al2000 Change blindness could occur in the absence of a visual disruption if the momentary of the changing image. Simons et al. Rensink O’Regan et al. Levin & simons A brief visual disruption occurs then change image is presented. Visual disruption includes saccades. Blank screens. Blinks. Mud splashes. Motion picture cuts or changes in camera angle. Ball, vance, Edwards, and Wadley Jackson and Owsley 2002 Normal aging often have a reduction in visual ability and speed of cognitive processing.

Method Participants –25 younger adults (mean age is 22.3 years) –13 older adults (mean age is 68.5 years) –20/25 visual Equipment –A personal computer by using presentation. –Touch screen monitor.

Method Stimuli –47 pairs of pictures. –Creating the pictures by using Adobe Photo Shop version 5.5. –It takes 4000 ms on the changing pictures (2000 ms per picture). –Each trial has 5 cycles.

Method Procedure –Two practice sessions. Touch the white dot on the screen. (5 places) –Training session (5 trials) 3 trials have change and 2 trials don’t have change. –Every participant viewed 94 randomly ordered trials. 47 change and 47 non-change.

Results Response accuracy –Younger drivers have greater accuracy than older drivers. –In the changing pictures, older testers have fewer changes than younger testers. –In the non-changing pictures, older drivers performed lower level of younger drivers.

Results Response times –Younger drivers responded more faster than older drivers. –Younger drivers have fewer non-responses than older drivers.

Results Response behavior –In the element changed, younger drivers have quickly response time than older drivers. –Younger drivers have lower percentage of non- responses in the change pictures.

Results Pictures: non-change –Testers asked to indicate non-change by depressing the space bar. –Older drivers failed to respond more often than younger drivers. –Older drivers had a greater percentage of false positive responses than younger drivers.

Discussion The results of the study has three points: 1. Reduced accuracy. 2. Increased reaction times. 3. More false positive responses in identifying change.

Discussion Even we had normal visual acuity for all participants but some older drivers have eye disease like: cataract, glaucoma, it would let them lose the ability of focus on objects presented at near distances.

Discussion Older drivers have slower response times than younger drivers, may be related to the older driver have decreased visual processing speed and reduced visual attention. The older drivers have increased inability to discover the change may probability increase the risk of car crashes for them.

Discussion For older individuals, reductions in vision, cognitive processing and physical sensitive are likely to contribute to poorer performance on our change blindness task.