VR for the Elderly: Quantitative and Qualitative Differences in Performance with a Driving Simulator

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of age differences in virtual reality (VR) use. One hundred forty-eight users, grouped by age and balanced by gender, answered questionnaires about their driving, educational, and medical histories, as well as their experience with computers. Participants then completed a driving assessment in a low-cost, PC-based virtual environment known as DriVR. Dependent measures included both automatic and observer recorded quantitative measures of driving performance, as well as participant reported qualitative measures of difficulty, comfort, visual clarity, delay, and simulator sickness. There were few age-related differences in quantitative measures, whereas qualitative differences between middle-aged and elderly participants were seldom found. These results indicated that use of VR with the elderly is quite feasible. In a contradiction of previously reported results, symptoms of simulator sickness increased with age.

Driving Simulation in the Clinic: Testing Visual Exploratory Behavior in Daily Life Activities in Patients with Visual Field Defects

“…2 Simulation sickness is described as nausea, sweating or dizziness persisting during a driving session. There is different data on frequency of occurrence ranging from 9 % to 37 % depending on age as it occurs more likely in the elderly 8,9,10 . Thorough preparation with practice drives long enough for each individual for proper adjustment reduce the chance of simulation sickness.…”

Desktop virtual environments: a study of navigation and age

“…Interaction in immersive VR systems has been found to be feasible for older users when using a driving simulator to assess the driving capabilities of people who have suffered head injuries (Liu et al, 1999). Ousland and Turcato (1999) identified a negative correlation between age and navigation performance in a study of the usability of desktop collaborative VEs, finding that younger users performed better than older users.…”

Use of immersive virtual reality to assess episodic memory: A validation study in older adults

“…Their occurrence could seriously hamper the applicability of VR technology in populations that are sensitive to these symptoms. A few studies have found more frequent cybersickness symptoms in older adults relative to younger ones, although the reported difference appears to be of a relatively small magnitude (Arns & Cerney, 2005;Liu, Watson, & Miyazaki, 1999). However, a more recent study reported no increase in cybersickness symptoms following immersion in older adults (Benoit et al, 2015).…”