Inattentional Blindness During Driving in Younger and Older Adults

Abstract

Age-related changes to perceptual and cognitive abilities have been implicated in an increased risk of collision in older adults. This may be due, in part, to their reduced ability to attend to potentially relevant aspects of their driving environment. An associated general phenomenon of inattentional blindness involves a failure to notice visually presented objects or events when attention is directed elsewhere. Previous studies of inattentional blindness using computer paradigms report higher incidence of this effect in older compared to younger adults. However, little is known about whether these age-related effects are observed during more complex, realistic, everyday tasks, such as driving. Therefore, the goal of this study was to explore whether younger and older adults differ in their awareness of objects in their driving environment when their attention is directed toward another primary driving task. This study took place in a high-fidelity, full field of view, driving simulator. Thirty-two younger ( M age = 25.41) and 32 older ( M age = 73.41) adults drove through 19 short scenarios and were asked to first judge whether their vehicle could fit between two rows of vehicles parked on either side of the road and then to perform the associated driving maneuver (i.e., drive through or drive around). On four critical trials, objects were placed on the side of the road that differed in terms of animacy. Specifically, animate objects consisted of 3D humans standing by a bus shelter and inanimate objects consisted of photographs of the same individuals on a bus shelter advertisement. Inattentional blindness was measured via a post-drive, tablet-based recognition task immediately following the critical trials. Results revealed high rates of inattentional blindness across both age groups, with significantly lower levels of awareness for inanimate objects compared to animate objects. Further, whereas younger adults demonstrated reduced inattentional blindness following the first critical trial, older adults did not show this immediate improvement in recognition performance. Overall, this study provides unique insights into the factors associated with age-related changes to attention and how they may affect important driving-related outcomes.

Attentional development can help us understand the inattentional blindness effect in visual search

“…More lifespan studies (not only developmental) are needed to test these hypotheses, as are new ways to improve IB paradigms to allow for more than one or two critical trials per observer. Those studies should also include older adults who have been found to show increasing IB levels at older ages quite consistently over several works (e.g., O'Shea and Fieo, 2015;Horwood and Beanland, 2016;Saryazdi et al, 2019). Lifespan studies could be a source of information to understand how these task-related variation and cognitive process maturation might interact to understand why we sometimes miss what is right in front of our eyes.…”

“…In prior work on the effects of age, several studies have shown larger IB effects in older adults both in static and dynamic IBtasks (O'Shea and Fieo, 2015;Horwood and Beanland, 2016), and in more applied tasks, like driving simulations (Saryazdi et al, 2019). At the other end of the lifespan continuum, using the gorilla paradigm, Memmert (2014) found that younger children were more likely to show IB effects in a large sample of 480 participants from 8 to 15 years-old.…”

Humans, fish, spiders and bees inherited working memory and attention from their last common ancestor

“…Attention is also attracted to fear-related objects more quickly than objects that are unlikely to provoke fear ( Ohman et al, 2001 ; Lin et al, 2009 ). Animate objects capture attention more readily than inanimate objects ( New et al, 2007 ; Calvillo and Hawkins, 2016 ; Saryazdi et al, 2019 ). Attention tends to be rapidly captured by motion, especially the onset or cessation of movement, or by looming objects ( Hillstrom and Yantis, 1994 ; Abrams and Christ, 2003 ; Franconeri and Simons, 2003 ; Kawahara et al, 2012 ; Smith and Abrams, 2018 ).…”

Introducing the VIMSSQ: Measuring susceptibility to visually induced motion sickness

“…Once participants drove through or around the parked vehicles, they were instructed to bring the car to a stop at their own pace. Detailed methods and results of the driving/judgment task can be found in Saryazdi et al (2019).…”

“…That is, in this proof-of-concept study, we assessed whether scores on the VIMSSQ were associated with the actual level of VIMS reported during a simulated driving task. The results pertinent to the driving section of this study (e.g., driving performance, drivers' attention) are not of relevance for the purpose of this study, but are reported in Saryazdi, Bak, and Campos (2019). visual acuity (measured via the ETDRS eye chart), as well as a valid driver's license with at least two years of recent driving experience.…”