Multitasking During Simulated Car Driving: A Comparison of Young and Older Persons

Abstract

Human multitasking is typically studied by repeatedly presenting two tasks, either sequentially (task switch paradigms) or overlapping in time (dual-task paradigms). This is different from everyday life, which typically presents an ever-changing sequence of many different tasks. Realistic multitasking therefore requires an ongoing orchestration of task switching and dual-tasking. Here we investigate whether the age-related decay of multitasking, which has been documented with pure task-switch and pure dual-task paradigms, can also be quantified with a more realistic car driving paradigm. 63 young (20–30 years of age) and 61 older (65–75 years of age) participants were tested in an immersive driving simulator. They followed a car that occasionally slowed down and concurrently executed a mixed sequence of loading tasks that differed with respect to their sensory input modality, cognitive requirements and motor output channel. In two control conditions, the car-following or the loading task were administered alone. Older participants drove more slowly, more laterally and more variably than young ones, and this age difference was accentuated in the multitask-condition, particularly if the loading task took participants’ gaze and attention away from the road. In the latter case, 78% of older drivers veered off the road and 15% drove across the median. The corresponding values for young drivers were 40% and 0%, respectively. Our findings indicate that multitasking deteriorates in older age not only in typical laboratory paradigms, but also in paradigms that require orchestration of dual-tasking and task switching. They also indicate that older drivers are at a higher risk of causing an accident when they engage in a task that takes gaze and attention away from the road.

Effects of Visual and Acoustic Distraction on Driving Behavior and EEG in Young and Older Car Drivers: A Driving Simulation Study

“…Considering driving in real traffic, this suggested that even the anticipation or announcement of a difficult driving task or driving situation may decrease the responses to relevant stimuli. This could result in the (conscious or unconscious) use of compensation strategies and self-regulation driving behavior, which has been often reported for driving in real traffic (e.g., Molnar and Eby, 2008; Donorfio et al, 2009), but also in driving simulation studies (e.g., Wechsler et al, 2018) and other laboratory tasks in the driving context (e.g., Feng et al, 2018). Potential compensatory strategies in difficult driving situations in reality could be the reduction of driving speed, the increase of the distance to preceding cars, and also the deliberate turning off of infotainment systems.…”

“…Impairment of dual task performance can be attributed to sensory, motor, or cognitive interference with quite different performance pattern each (e.g., Pashler, 1994; Wild-Wall et al, 2011; Strayer et al, 2016; Wechsler et al, 2018). In the task used in the present study, sensory interference should lead to higher braking RT in trials with two stimuli (brake light plus secondary stimulus) compared to single brake lights, without any differences between Go- and NoGo-trials.…”

Benefits of Higher Cardiovascular and Motor Coordinative Fitness on Driving Behavior Are Mediated by Cognitive Functioning: A Path Analysis

“…The primary outcomes of interest in driving were: (1) variability in lateral car position (Latpos SD) as an indicator of lane keeping, and (2) mean velocity (Velocity M) as an indicator of speed control. Both parameters are common measures of driving performance and were found to be particularly sensitive to driving under dual-tasking conditions in previous studies (Papantoniou et al, 2017;Wechsler et al, 2018;Depestele et al, 2020;Stojan and Voelcker-Rehage, 2021). Four fluid cognitive functions (inhibition, shifting, updating, cognitive processing speed) were assessed and set separately as intermediate dependent variables in our path model (see ''Statistical Approach'' section and Figure 1).…”

Inattentional Blindness During Driving in Younger and Older Adults

“…As such, broad object awareness may generally be limited during driving compared to less complex tasks, particularly during conditions of higher cognitive and perceptual load. For instance, cognitive load can be increased during driving by the introduction of multitasking requirements (e.g., listening/talking, holding information in memory, navigating; Strayer and Johnston, 2001; Strayer et al, 2003, 2013; Horrey and Wickens, 2006; Blalock et al, 2014; Cuenen et al, 2015; Donmez and Liu, 2015; Ebnali et al, 2016; Svetina, 2016; Murphy and Greene, 2017a; Caird et al, 2018; Wechsler et al, 2018) and perceptual load may be introduced by, for example, environmental clutter (e.g., traffic, buildings, signs, pedestrians; Marciano and Yeshurun, 2012, 2015; Stinchcombe and Gagnon, 2013; Ericson et al, 2017; Michaels et al, 2017), or by increasing perceptual task difficulty (e.g., judging maneuverability around closely arranged obstacles; Murphy and Greene, 2015, 2016). Previous studies with younger drivers have demonstrated more instances of inattentional blindness during conditions of higher compared to lower cognitive and perceptual load (e.g., Most and Astur, 2007; Blalock et al, 2014; Murphy and Greene, 2015, 2016, 2017a,b; Ericson et al, 2017; see Murphy et al, 2016 for a review).…”