To investigate the links between mental workload, age and risky driving, a cross-sectional study was conducted on a driving simulator using several established and some novel measures of driving ability and scenarios of varying complexity. A sample of 115 drivers was divided into three age and experience groups: young inexperienced (18–21 years old), adult experienced (25–55 years old) and older adult (70–86 years old). Participants were tested on three different scenarios varying in mental workload from low to high. Additionally, to gain a better understanding of individuals’ ability to capture and integrate relevant information in a highly complex visual environment, the participants’ perceptual-cognitive capacity was evaluated using 3-dimensional multiple object tracking (3D-MOT). Results indicate moderate scenario complexity as the best suited to highlight well-documented differences in driving ability between age groups and to elicit naturalistic driving behavior. Furthermore, several of the novel driving measures were shown to provide useful, non-redundant information about driving behavior, complementing more established measures. Finally, 3D-MOT was demonstrated to be an effective predictor of elevated crash risk as well as decreased naturally-adopted mean driving speed, particularly among older adults. In sum, the present experiment demonstrates that in cases of either extreme high or low task demands, drivers can become overloaded or under aroused and thus task measures may lose sensitivity. Moreover, insights from the present study should inform methodological considerations for future driving simulator research. Importantly, future research should continue to investigate the predictive utility of perceptual-cognitive tests in the domain of driving risk assessment.

The findings of this experiment, particularly those of the red-blue isoluminance task, indicate that the optical factor of lenticular senescence is the main contributor to the age-related changes observed in color vision. A model based on age-related changes in lenticular absorbance shows good fit with the experimental data of observers with phakic eyes, suggesting that optical factors are the main cause of the age-related changes in these color vision tasks.

The fluttering-heart illusion is a perceived lagging behind of a colour target on a background of a different colour when the two are oscillated together. It has been proposed that the illusion is caused by a differential in the perceptual latencies of different colours (Helmholtz 1867/1962), a differential in rod-cone latencies (von Kries 1896) and rod-cone interactions (von Grünau 1975, 1976 Vision Research 15 431-436, 437-440; 16 397-401; see list of references there). The purpose of this experiment was to assess the hypothesis that the fluttering-heart illusion is caused by a differential in the perceived velocities of chromatic and achromatic motion. To evaluate this hypothesis, we tested observers possessing normal colour vision and deuteranopes. The perceived delay of a chromatic target relative to an achromatic target was measured as a function of background cone contrast and target colour. For observers with normal colour vision, the perceived delay of the chromatic target is greater in the L-S than the L-M testing conditions. The reverse is observed in deuteranope observers. We suggest that this is caused by the absence of an L-M opponent mechanism contributing to chromatic motion in deuteranopes. Greater background cone contrasts tended to yield smaller perceived delays in both normal and deuteranope observers, indicating that greater chromatic modulation decreases the perceived delay of the colour target. These results support the hypothesis that the fluttering-heart illusion can be explained by a differential in the perceived velocities of chromatic and achromatic motion.

The perceived speed of chromatic motion was investigated for gratings that stimulate each chromatic mechanism [L-M and S-(L+M)] in isolation and for gratings that stimulate both chromatic systems. The observers' task consisted of adjusting the speed of a drifting achromatic grating to match the perceived speed of an isoluminant chromatic grating, drifting at 8 deg/s (temporal frequency of 4 Hz). Every observer reported a substantial decrease in perceived speed for chromatic gratings modulated along the S-(L+M) (blue-yellow) cardinal axis compared to other directions in color space. One observer even reported motion standstill for gratings modulated along this axis. Further testing demonstrates that the perceived speed of an isoluminant chromatic grating depends solely on the extent to which it stimulates the L-M (red-green) mechanism. Thus, under the conditions that were tested, the S-(L+M) postreceptoral mechanism does not appear to contribute significantly to determining the perceived speed of chromatic motion.

Previous psychophysical experiments have demonstrated that various factors can exert a considerable influence on the apparent velocity of visual stimuli. Here, we investigated the effects of superimposing static luminance texture on the apparent speed of a drifting grating. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that superimposing static luminance texture on a drifting luminance modulated grating can produce an increase in perceived speed. This supports the hypothesis that texture changes perceived speed by providing landmarks to assess relative motion. In Experiment 2, we showed that contrary to static luminance texture, dynamic luminance texture did not increase perceived speed. This demonstrates that texture must provide reliable spatial landmarks in order to generate an increase in perceived speed. The results of Experiment 3 demonstrate that perceived speed depends on the size of the area covered by texture. This suggests that luminance texture and the motion stimulus interacted with each other over a limited spatial scale and that these local responses are then pooled to determine the speed of the motion stimulus. In Experiment 4, we showed that static texture contrast could produce a greater effect than motion stimulus contrast on perceived speed and that these effects could still be observed at brief presentation times. We discuss these findings in the context of models proposed to account for phenomena in the perception of speed.