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To evaluate the ability to predict on-road driving in cognitively impaired older drivers.Cross-sectional observational study.Laboratory tests and on-road assessment.Drivers with cognitive impairment (Mini-Mental State Examination score26, N = 43, mean age 74).The Roadwise Review, a hazard perception test (HPT), several vision tests, and a standardized 18-km driving assessment.The best prediction of passing or failing the on-road test was a combination of the HPT, leg strength, visual acuity, visual search and working memory, and number of medications taken (Nagelkerke coefficient of determination = 0.40). The sensitivity of the model was 71%, and the specificity was 75%.Further research is required to determine how these tests may be used or combined with other data (e.g., medical history) to assess fitness to drive of cognitively impaired older drivers.

Background The rapidly increasing number of older drivers is accentuating the challenges in concurrently identifying older drivers posing an unacceptable risk if they continue to drive, while not discriminating against those capable of safely driving. Attendees of an invitational meeting about the assessment of older drivers were asked to participate in a modified Delphi process designed to develop consensus statements on the assessment of older drivers. Methods Forty-one non-student symposium attendees were invited to participate in two rounds of a survey, in which they were asked to indicate their level of agreement (or disagreement) on a five-point Likert scale to a series of statements about the assessment of older drivers. Consensus was defined as 80% + of respondents either agreeing or disagreeing with a statement. Results More than one-half (n = 23) completed the first round of the survey and 12 participated in the second. There was consensus on the need for a modifiable, fair, rational, and widely accessible multi-step approach to the assessment of older drivers. This would require the engagement and support of physicians and other health-care practitioners in identifying and reporting medically at-risk drivers of any age. At a societal level, alternatives to driving a personal motor vehicle should be developed. Conclusions An on-going dialogue about this complex issue is required. Decisions should be based on explicitly stated principles and informed by the best available evidence.

Hazard perception is a vital component to safe driving and hazard perception tests (HPTs) are being used with greater frequency for driver training, assessment and licensure. In this study, we compared a dynamic HPT (Scialfa et al., 2011), which presents short video scenes to observers and a static HPT (Scialfa et al., 2012), which uses still images. Both tests require the observer to indicate the presence of a traffic conflict that would lead to a collision between the "camera" vehicle and another road user or fixed object. Young adult drivers (n=56) completed both forms of the HPT, along with a modified version of the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (Reason et al., 1990) and a measure of simple reaction time. Self-reported collision and moving violation data were also collected. As in previous work, both static and dynamic HPTs had good reliability. The correlation between composite static and dynamic scores was approximately .40, but was reduced to approximately .25 when simple reaction time was controlled. Both HPTs predicted lapses and errors on the Driver Behavior Questionnaire, but neither predicted self-reported collisions or moving violations. Discussion focuses on the differences in visual cues available in dynamic and static scenes and how these differences could influence decisions about potential hazards.

Traffic collisions are a major cause of violent death and disability worldwide (Goldman & Ausiello, 2009). In developing countries, mortality rates are significantly higher when compared to other countries. In Brazil, official data show 23.4 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 10.6 in the United States and 6.0 in Canada (Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015). Driving requires specific motor and cognitive skills, such hazard perception. The Hazard Perception Test (HPT) assesses a drivers' ability to identify or anticipate dangerous situations in traffic (Horswill & McKenna, 2004) and taps into different cognitive processes, such as speed to detect the hazard, judgment of hazard severity, and decision-making. The HPT has been directly associated with the risk of collision (Darby et al, 2009; McKenna & Horswill, 1999; Quimby et al, 1986; Wells et al, 2008). Many countries, such as Australia and Great Britain, have made hazard perception a regular component of the driving test. In Brazil, however, candidates undergo an exam that has the characteristics of a clinical screening and does not assess context-specific cognitive abilities. Thus, there is a clear demand for clinical procedures with greater diagnostic sensitivity that address fundamental abilities such as hazard perception. The goal of the study was to employ an adapted version of the static Hazard Perception Test (s-HPT) under standardized Brazilian conditions. Results indicated that drivers' ability to perceive hazards is clearly dependent on variables such as expertise, age, and gender. The results are in accordance with previous studies conducted in other countries.

Novice drivers exhibit deficits in hazard perception that are likely to increase their risk of collisions. We developed a static hazard perception test that presents still images to observers and requires them to indicate the presence of a traffic conflict that would lead to a collision. Responses to these scenes were obtained for young adult novice (N=29) and experienced drivers (N=27). Additionally, participants rated the hazard risk and clutter of each scene. Novice drivers rated traffic conflicts as less hazardous and responded more slowly to them. Using a subset of 21 scenes, we were able to discriminate novice and experienced young adult drivers with a classification accuracy of 78% and a scale reliability (Cronbach's alpha) of .91. The potential applications of this research include the development of standardized hazard perception tests that can be used for driver evaluation, training and licensure.

Background/Study Context: We are often required to carry out complex tasks in changing, context-dependent ways. This task switching requires the rapid realignment of attention to task constraints and may be age sensitive. Methods: Three experiments, two in which eye movements were recorded, were conducted to assess age-related differences in task switching and inhibitory control. Observers carried out a Same-Different task and Go-No Go task in single and mixed blocks of trials. Results: Other than Experiment 1, although switch costs were observed, they were not larger for older adults compared to younger adults. Furthermore, eye movement and false alarm data demonstrated little evidence of age-related decline in inhibitory and oculomotor control. Conclusions: A major implication is that, at least when two tasks involve different stimuli and unique responses, older adults are no more likely than younger adults to show task-switching costs or inhibition deficit.

We developed a hazard perception test, modeled on that used currently in several Australian states, that presents short video scenes to observers and requires them to indicate the presence of a traffic conflict that would lead to a collision between the "camera" vehicle and another road user. After eliminating those scenes that were problematic (e.g., many observers did not recognize the hazard), we predicted driver group (novice vs. experienced drivers of similar age) on the basis of individual differences in reaction time, miss rate and false alarm rate. Novices were significantly slower in responding to hazards, even after controlling for age and simple reaction time. After selecting those scenes with the larger group differences, an 18-scene test that would be useful for mass testing exhibited even larger experience effects. There was good reliability in the resulting scale. Results suggest that this brief test of hazard perception can discriminate groups that differ in driving experience. Implications for driver licensing, evaluation and training are discussed.

The Roadwise Review has been reported to provide an effective means of self-assessing and predicting driving difficulties in older adults. We administered it to 73 community-dwelling older drivers (M = 73 years) and also gathered data on self-reported driving difficulties, 2-year retrospective collisions, and moving violations. The acuity tests and Useful Field of View exhibited substantial ceiling effects that limit predictive utility, and there was a high failure rate on the head and neck flexibility test. Additionally, the Roadwise Review did not predict self-reported driving problems or collision risk. Thus, in current form, it does not appear to be a useful tool for assessing older drivers. Future research efforts should assess predictive validity in a more heterogeneous sample of older adults and with a broader range of outcomes, including on-road driving performance. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

One reason that older drivers may have elevated crash risk is because they anticipate hazardous situations less well than middle-aged drivers. Hazard perception ability has been found to be amenable to training in young drivers. This article reports an experiment in which video-based hazard perception training was given to drivers who were between the ages of 65 and 94 years. Trained participants were significantly faster at anticipating traffic hazards compared with an untrained control group, and this benefit was present even after the authors controlled for pretraining ability. If future research shows these effects to be robust, the implications for driver training and safety are significant.

As part of a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR)-funded Strategic Training Grant, we have developed and delivered a brief course in research ethics directed toward postgraduate students in experimental gerontology. In this paper, we report on the initial offering, its content and delivery, and student reactions to the course. We conclude with some thoughts for others who wish to develop and evaluate similar courses in the future.

Sign comprehension is critical for effective driving, responses to warnings, and way-finding. Signs that are poorly comprehended by older people increase accident risk and may compromise independence. This study sought to determine whether iconic sign comprehension suffers in healthy aging and in the presence of cognitive impairment. Additionally, we examined whether the addition of text to iconic signage would increase comprehension in older adults. In Experiment 1, young adults, healthy older adults, and older adults with varying levels of cognitive impairment were asked the meaning of 65 signs used for driving, warnings, and way-finding. Healthy older adults were generally good at sign comprehension but had difficulty with way-finding signs. Older adults with cognitive impairment had poorer sign comprehension overall and particular difficulty with way-finding icons and signs that had icons only. In Experiment 2, healthy older adults were asked the meaning of signs containing icons only, or icons and text. A significant improvement in comprehension was found when text was added. An important implication of this work is that the assessment of sign comprehension needs to involve a broad and heterogeneous sample of older adults reflecting the range of perceptual and cognitive abilities represented in the population.

RÉSUMÉLes procédures de formation cognitive informatique visent à augmenter la sécurité en améliorant les compétences relatives à la conduite, comme la vitesse-de-traitement et le Useful Field of View. L'étude actuelle a évalué l'efficacité du DriveSharp dans la formation des conducteurs âgés dans un cadre de classe réaliste. Les participants (n = 24) ont assisté à 10 heures de cours de DriveSharp pendant 5 semaines. Les séances pré- et post-test ont evalués améliorations sur un essai dynamique de la perception du risque, Trails A et Trails B. Un groupe de contrôle (n = 18) a terminé seulement les séances pré- et post-test. En classe, les temps de formation étaient plus bas que prévus. L'amélioration des participants aux jeux ont stabilisée après la première évaluation, et le groupe de DriveSharp n'a pas démontré une amélioration significative des performances sur les tests, par rapport au groupe de contrôle. Parmi plusieurs questions relatives à la facilité d'utilisation, les plus problématiques étaient le malentendudes objectifs de la tâche et la différence entre la formation et l'évaluation. Il y a plusieurs implications pour ceux qui utilisent DriveSharp pour améliorer la sécurité des conducteurs âgés.

The perception of on-road hazards is critically important to emergency medical services (EMS) professionals, the patients they transport and the general public. This study compared hazard perception in EMS and civilian drivers of similar age and personal driving experience. Twenty-nine EMS professionals and 24 non-professional drivers were given a dynamic hazard perception test (HPT). The EMS group demonstrated an advantage in HPT that was independent of simple reaction time, another indication of the validity of the test. These results are also consistent with the view that professional driving experience results in changes in the ability to identify and respond to on-road hazards. Directions for future research include the development of a profession-specific hazard perception tool for both assessment and training purposes.

INTRODUCTION: The current study builds on previous versions of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) by incorporating a larger sample of driving behaviors targeting inattention, distraction, aggressive driving, and health related to aging. The goals of this study were to determine if the resulting factor structure was consistent with a more contemporary view of unsafe driving behaviors, and to determine whether scores on the factors could predict self-reported collisions and police citations. METHODS: The instrument was given to a sample of 3295 drivers ranging in age from 19 to 80+ years old. It was divided in two sections, the first to provide demographic information and driving history data and the second containing 105 driver behavior questions. RESULTS: An exploratory factor analysis resulted in a 65-item scale organized in four factors. The factors were labeled tentatively as Inattention Errors, Age-Related Problems, Distraction and Hurry, and Aggressive Violations. Regression analyses showed that the factors were predictors of self-reported, at-fault collisions and police citations. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The factor scores found in this research are consistent with a useful theoretical framework for understanding unsafe driver actions, and demonstrate some potential to identify several individual difference variables that predict self-reported collisions and citations. Keywords: Driver distraction; Language: en

Potential age-related differences in the memory processes that underlie visual search are examined in the present study. Using a dynamic, gaze-contingent search paradigm developed to assess memory for previously examined distractors, older adults demonstrated no memory deficit. Surprisingly, older adults made fewer refixations compared to their younger counterparts, indicating better memory for previously inspected objects. This improved memory was not the result of a speed-accuracy trade-off or larger Inhibition-of-Return effects for older than for younger adults. Additional analyses suggested that older adults may derive their benefit from finer spatial encoding of search items. These findings suggest that some of the memory processes that support visual search are relatively age invariant.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether executive dysfunction differentially impacts list-learning and story recall tasks in a sample of older adults referred for suspected cognitive impairment. Older adults (N = 61) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or probable mild dementia, and those who did not meet criteria for diagnosis of dementia, were assessed using measures of executive function and verbal memory. Two groups were established based on performance on measures of executive function: (a) the No Executive Dysfunction group (NoED; n = 33) consisted of persons without impairment on any obtained measures of executive function; and (b) the Executive Dysfunction group (ED; n = 28) contained persons with impairment on at least one of the measures of executive function. The two groups were compared on performance on two measures of verbal memory, the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II) and the Logical Memory (LM) subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R). The NoED group performed significantly better than the ED group on the total learning and short delay free recall trials of the CVLT-II. However, there were no significant differences between the groups on the other indices of the CVLT-II (i.e., long delay free recall, recognition, recall repetitions, recall intrusions, or recognition false-positives) or on the immediate and delayed recall trials of the LM measure. These results support previous research demonstrating the impact of executive dysfunction on the acquisition of and short-delay retrieval of verbal information in older adults with suspected cognitive impairment.

An innovative gerontology education program was developed to advance research on aging that is interdisciplinary and promotes the translation of knowledge from lab to life. The program focuses on communication and social interaction in healthy aging. It brings together faculty mentors, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows from six different postsecondary institutions in Canada. The program unifies basic laboratory research in hearing, vision, and cognition with applied research in audiology, biomedical engineering, optometry, psychology, speech-language pathology, human factors, and social work. The design, implementation, and evaluation of the first year of the program are described and future directions are suggested.

Younger and older participants were trained in a triple conjunction visual search task to examine age differences in the development of proficient performance. For the first 8 days, participants searched for a target defined by its contrast polarity, shape, and orientation. On Days 9 through 16, the target identity was switched to one defined by opposing feature values. On Day 17, the target was returned to the original feature values. Results indicated that, after training, younger adults reduced their display size effects more than elderly adults. Disruption occurred after the first but not after the second transfer. However, each time the target was switched, there were no age differences in disruption. Eye movement data suggest that older adults use a similar feature selection strategy as younger adults but may be more susceptible to distraction. The results are discussed in terms of current models of attention and search.

An experiment examined potential age-related differences in priming of pop-out (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994, 1996, 2000; McPeek, Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1999), an implicit, memory-based phenomenon that facilitates repeated gaze or attention shifts between visually similar stimuli. Older and younger adults performed a visual search task requiring them to judge the orientation of a color singleton target. Trial-to-trial repetition of target color and/or target position primed attentional selection for both age groups, producing faster and more accurate responses. Age-related increases in the strength of priming by target color appeared to arise from generalized slowing in older observers’, but marginal age-related increases in the strength of priming by target position remained even after transformation to account for generalized slowing.

The distracting effects of a simulated conversation with passengers and those of a conversation over a hands-free cellular phone were compared. The conversation was also analyzed to determine if passengers modulated their conversations as driving demands changed. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: driving alone, driving with a passenger, and driving with a cellular phone. Drivers drove through residential and urban traffic environments in a fixed-based driving simulator in which a variety of events occurred, such as pedestrian activity, oncoming vehicles, and intersections. The results indicated that lane and speed maintenance were influenced by increased driving demands. Response times to a pedestrian incursion increased when the driver was driving and talking compared with those detected when the driver was not talking at all. Contrary to what some researchers have assumed, there was little practical evidence that passengers adjusted their conversations to changes in the traffic environment. The workload was rated higher when the driver was driving and talking and was also rated higher by drivers than by nondrivers. The discussion focuses on future research and implications for driver safety and training.

Foundational concepts in psychology are introduced to "27% of all full-time students" in postsecondary institutions each year (Scheirer & Rogers, 1985), constituting an annual North American class size of more than one million adults. In part, these numbers reflect the growth in popularity and perceived value of academic psychology since it was made part of university and college curricula. Understandably, teachers of psychology and their professional organizations have expended considerable effort to set the pedagogical goals for this introduction to the topic (e.g., Gilliland, 1932; Goodwin, 1992; Irion, 1976; Sanford, 1910; Wolfle, 1942). Primary among these goals is that of imparting to students academic psychology's orientation, guiding principles, and facts, on the assumption that there is agreement about the conceptual heart of the discipline. The present study is intended to contribute to the identification of the conceptual core of the introductory psychology curriculum.Scrutiny of the introductory textbook is a common strategy for determining core psychology concepts. However, empirical investigations of textbook content are divided on the issue of content consistency. A number of studies employing gross measures of topic coverage (e.g., page counts devoted to a topic) in different texts at a single time point (Griggs, Jackson, & Napolitano, 1994), in the same text over time (Griggs & Jackson, 1996), and in different texts over time (Webb, 1991) give an impression of coherence and stable consensus about the introductory conceptual corpus. Other studies using similar approaches suggest a picture of variation and inconsistency (Harari & Jacobsen, 1984; Weiten, 1988). Efforts at identifying core concepts using more fine-grained analyses of index terms (Boneau, 1990; Quereshi, 1993; Quereshi & Sackett, 1977; Quereshi & Zulli, 1975), glossaries (Boneau, 1990; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) or page-by-page content (Landrum, 1993) have led some to see convergence and coherence (Quereshi, 1993) and others to suggest that there is little compelling evidence of a sizeable set of common concepts (Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000).A variety of methodological issues have undoubtedly contributed to the equivocal character of work in this area, including differences in chosen sets of textbooks to study; extraneous sources of content variance in the indices, glossaries, and textbook design; and variation in the criteria used for determining that a concept is common to a number of textbooks. This state of affairs leaves ample room for interpretive disagreement about the extent and nature of consensus about core concepts. Whereas Quereshi (1993) reported that recent texts were "more comprehensive and more similar to each other" (p. 220) than previously examined texts, Zechmeister and Zechmeister (2000) found "evidence for incoherence rather than coherence, instability as opposed to stability..." (p. 6) when they examined Quereshi's (1993) data.The point of departure for the present study is the observation that however lamentably small the number, recent studies (Landrum 1993; Quereshi, 1993; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) have nonetheless been able to identify a number of core concepts in the introductory curriculum ranging from as few as 64 (Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000) using a 100% inclusion criteria in 10 books, to 141 in 75% of 52 books (Quereshi, 1993). Landrum's (1993) finding of 126 concepts common to all six texts he reviewed falls in this range. The thrust of our approach is to explore further where in the introductory curriculum consensus about core concepts exists. Using a content analysis approach, we specifically sought to identify which, if any, areas in the introductory curriculum exhibit consensus about core concepts.Two previous studies have examined concepts by topic or area. Quereshi (1993) classified 137 terms found common to 75% of 52 books into four broad areas: biopsychology, clinical psychology, learning and development, and popular psychology. …

The purpose of Study 1a was to determine the criteria that differentiate students who perform well and those who perform poorly on a standardized test of university-level writing. Discriminant function analysis revealed that measures of structure, sentencing, paragraphing, and grammar play the most important role in separating these two groups. These results were used in Study 1b to develop a tutorial attended by an independent group of students preparing to write a standardized writing exam. The intervention had a positive effect on their test performance. Participants reported the tutorial to be useful, committed fewer errors on most of the criteria, and had a higher probability of passing the exam. It was concluded that this type of tutorial is beneficial to students who are preparing for such exams and may have wider educational use for those seeking assistance with their writing skills.

Two experiments examined the disruption of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search at multiple target transfers. In Experiment 1, after 10 training sessions, a new target possessing previous distractor features was introduced. This produced disruption in RT and fixation number, but no disruption in feature-based selection. Specifically, there was a tendency to fixate objects sharing the target's contrast polarity and shape and this did not change even upon transfer to the new target. In Experiment 2, 30 training sessions were provided with three target transfers. At the first transfer, the results replicated Experiment 1. Subsequent transfers did not produce disruption on any measure. These findings are discussed in terms of strength theory, Guided Search, rule-based approaches to perceptual learning, and the area activation model.

Performance on complex, cognitive tasks often is sensitive to low-level sensory and perceptual factors. These relations are particularly important for cognitive aging researchers because aging is associated with a variety of changes in sensory and perceptual function. In the article that follows, I first selectively outline some relations between task performance and sensory function. Next, I summarize age-related changes in visual function and the implications of these changes for task performance, using the digit-symbol subtest of the WAIS as an example. I offer some reasons why age-related sensory decline may not be important to all cognitive tasks. Finally, I provide several recommendations for cognitive gerontologists who want to minimize the risk that the age differences they observe are sensory in nature. The past decade of cognitive aging research has produced a small, but provocative and influential number of studies that suggest a rather strong correlation between age-related differences in sensory measures like visual acuity and cognitive measures of attention, memory, and intelligence. Understandably, these data are generating an uncertain and mixed reaction within the gerontological community. On the one hand, the possibility of a common or general cause of cognitive aging has parsimonious and clear intellectual appeal. On the other hand, such findings complicate the work of researchers who wish to attribute age differences in task performance to cognitive mechanisms. To motivate the discussion by example, Lindenberger and Baltes (1994) assessed corrected visual acuity and audiometric thresholds, along with several measures of cognitive function (e.g., reasoning) in over 150 people older than 70 years of age. The interrelationships among some of the variables are shown in Figure 1. Aging is strongly correlated with both visual and auditory function, which in turn have a substantial impact on cognition. Such a pattern is consistent with the view that age changes in cognition reflect a common factor that is also indexed by sensory function. However, the data are also compatible with the assertion that age differences in cognition are caused by sensory deficits that make it more difficult for the elderly to process the test materials. In fact, this is the position implicit in the model shown in Figure 1, because age impacts cognition only indirectly through its influence on sensory function. The substantial relations between sensory and cognitive function are not, as might be hypothesized, a result of selecting only an older sample in which undetected disease causes correlated interindividual differences in sensory thresholds and cognitive behaviour. Moderate to large correlations between age, sensation, and cognition have been found in life-span samples (Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997; Salthouse, Hancock, Meinz, & Hambrick, 1996) and in longitudinal designs (Schaie, Maitland, & Willis, 2000). Neither do the correlations result spuriously from age-related changes in response criterion (Burton, Owsley, & Sloane, 1993; Higgins, Jaffe, Caruso, & de Monasterio, 1988). Stevens, Cruz, Marks, and Lakatos (1998) found correlations between forced-choice measures of sensory function and performance on the Boston Picture Naming Test and Logical Memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale ranged from .35 to .78 in small, select groups of younger and older adults. The magnitude of the relationship appears to vary with sensory modality, but not always in ways that allow for easy causal models. For example, Glass (2000) reported that visual contrast sensitivity accounted for more age-related variance in spatial tasks than in verbal tasks. On the other hand, Stevens et al. found that it was touch and taste thresholds that had the highest correlations with the Logical Memory test. The sensory-cognitive link appears to be quite robust, crossing task domains as diverse as problem-solving and fluency (Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994), concept identification (Salthouse et al. …

Introduction : This study evaluated the ability to predict the on-road driving of older drivers using a battery of laboratory-based instruments. Methods : The Roadwise Review, a brief Hazard Perception Test and several tests of vision were given to 65 cognitively healthy, licensed older drivers ( M = 74 years, SD = 9 years). They also participated in a standardized driving assessment of approximately 18 km, along a mixed residential and commercial route. Results : Raw scores on the Roadwise Review did not predict accumulated points, or automatic disqualifications, but could predict who would pass or fail the on-road evaluation. The number of serious problems (excluding head and neck flexibility) that were identified by the Roadwise Review was a significant predictor of automatic disqualifications, and a significant predictor of passing or failing the on-road assessment. The Hazard Perception Test approached significance when predicting accumulated points and was a significant predictor of automatic disqualifications, as well as pass/fail outcomes. Conclusions : The best model for predicting passing or failing the on-road assessment included the Hazard Perception Test, color vision, and, a measure of walking speed from the Roadwise Review, which yielded a sensitivity of 82% and a specificity of 69% (AROC = .80). Future work will need to determine how these tests can be used with other information (e.g., medical history) to yield better diagnoses of fitness to drive, particularly among those who are medically at risk.

Three experiments investigated the generalisation of contextual cuing and whether the effect is incidental or intentional in nature. Experiment I assessed contextual cuing across variations in display contrast, homogeneity, and spatial separation. Cuing effects were found with all display types and reaction-time disruption was manifested for repeated displays when consistent configurations had their target locations altered. Recognition memory for repeated displays was at chance levels. Experiment 2 showed that contextual cuing was insensitive to instructions to search for and remember repeated displays. Experiment 2A found that there were no age differences in contextual cuing or effects of intentional instructions, and no memory for repeated displays. Future research questions concern the generalisation of contextual cuing to a wider variety of display conditions and naturalistic tasks.Keywords: contextual cuing, incidental versus intentional processing, cognitive agingVisual search, the process of detecting, localizing, and identifying task-relevant objects embedded within visual environments, is influenced by the physical properties of target items (e.g., Scialfa & Joffe, 1997; Wolfe, 1992), as well as the global configuration of elements within a display (Chun & Jiang, 1998; Chun & Phelps, 1999). Chun and Jiang reported that the spatial layout of a display could be learned unconsciously and facilitated performance when the locations of the target and distractors remained stable over repetitions. The magnitude of this effect, termed contextual culnfi, grew with experience.In the experiments reported in this article, we examined contextual cuing with four objectives. The first was to determine if the effect generalised across differences in low-level stimulus properties, such as contrast and object size, that vary in their demands for focused attention. Second, we examined the disruption in performance following changes to previously consistent display configurations. The third objective was to discern if instructions to intentionally monitor displays for spatial consistency had no effect on performance, as would be expected if contextual cuing is an incidental process. Finally, because older observers are expected to perform as well as their younger counterparts in incidental tasks, we compared younger and older adults' contextual cuing effects.In the first of several contextual cuing studies, Chun and Jiang (1998) had participants search displays that were composed of one target embedded among 11 distractor items. The target (the letter "T") was similar in size and form to the surrounding distractors (the letter ''L''). Trials were divided into blocks, each containing 24 visual search trials. Twelve of these trials were repeated in each block, whereas the remainder were generated randomly and were not repeated. Reaction times decreased as a function of task experience, but, of greater interest, reaction times (RTs) for repeated displays were faster than those for novel displays and the magnitude of this difference increased as participants progressed through the experiment.To determine whether this contextual cuing was caused by regular spatial relationships between the target and the distractors, the location of the target item was then varied within repeated displays. The contextual cuing effect was eradicated, suggesting consistency in relative location as a mechanism mediating faster responses in repeated displays. Subsequent studies (Chun & Phelps, 1999; Olson, Chun, & Allison, 2001) found the contextual cuing effect to be robust and reliable, its magnitude varying between 40 and 150 ms.Further research has established some of the factors influencing contextual cuing. It appears to operate in the absence of eye movements (van Asselen & Castelo-Branco, 2009) and. when arrays of simple objects (e.g., letters and numbers) are used, depends more heavily on local, rather than global, consistency of elements (Hoffmann & Sebald. …

Two experiments used the progressive demasking (PD) task to examine age differences in the ability to inhibit higher frequency competitors during the process of identifying a visually degraded word. In Experiment 1, older adults exhibited a larger inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect (i.e., slower identification of words with many higher frequency competitors) than younger adults, but additional analyses indicated that this difference could be explained by general slowing rather than a deficit in inhibitory abilities. In Experiment 2, a primed version of the PD task was used to promote hypothesis testing by semantically priming the target word (e.g., cry-weep) or a higher frequency competitor of the target (e.g, day-weep) prior to the onset of the demasking sequence. Although older adults were more likely to make identification errors consistent with an inhibitory deficit (e.g., identifying weep as week), these errors were infrequent overall and there was no corresponding evidence of a larger interference effect in the older adults' identification latencies. Taken together, performance in these two tasks provides little evidence of reduced inhibitory functioning in older adults. The implications for the inhibitory deficit hypothesis of cognitive aging and directions for future are discussed.

We analyzed multiple-choice questions provided in test banks for introductory psychology textbooks. In Study 1, we found that about 70% of students responded correctly to a given item, and there was a significant but inconsistent difference in difficulty across chapter topics. In Study 2, a single class of introductory psychology students took comprehensive exams of randomly selected test items that varied in estimated difficulty. As before, chapter topic had a significant, yet inconsistent effect, but test items had several desirable properties compared to Study 1. These data allow several recommendations for instructors who want to improve the characteristics of the multiple-choice exams they use.

In two experiments, younger and older observers carried out feature searches for targets defined by their luminance contrast and orientation. Additionally, they received consistent-mapping (CM) training in luminance contrast by orientation conjunction search, followed by a brief exposure to conjunction search under reversal conditions. In Experiment 1, display size effects on reaction time suggested that both younger and older observers were conducting a parallel search in all conditions and showed equivalent disruption at reversal. Experiment 2 was a substantive replication of the first using more difficult conjunction search displays. In addition to latency, we measured the number, duration, and feature-based selectivity of fixations made during conjunction search. Display size effects were larger than in Experiment 2 and were of equivalent magnitude in younger and older people. There were no age differences in improvement in conjunction search and minimal age differences in disruption following reversal. Both age groups demonstrated early in training that they could select items possessing target features (i.e., the color white), and both age groups demonstrated that they could not completely reverse this selectivity when these features no longer defined the target. These experiments have several implications for models of visual attention and age differences therein.

The effects of visual clutter, luminance, and aging on traffic sign conspicuity were examined in two experiments. Experiment 1a evaluated clutter using subjective judgments from 28 older and younger observers. Participants categorized daytime and nighttime traffic scenes into high or low clutter. Using these categorized scenes, in Experiment 1b a new sample of 28 younger and older participants visually searched for traffic signs. Reaction time and eye movement data were analyzed. Results suggested that aging and clutter affect con-spicuity. Moreover, older adults had poorer performance on target-absent trials. No luminance effect or any age by clutter interactions were obtained. Expertise gained through many years of driving may dampen clutter effects experienced by older adults. The nonlinear relationship between fixation frequency and fixation duration is discussed in relation to similar findings in experimental visual search. Results suggest that age differences found in processing simple visual stimuli may not generalize to more naturalistic scenes.

A training experiment was conducted to investigate age differences in the learning that occurs when ob- servers search for an orientation-defined target among a homogeneous set of distractors (i.e., feature search). Eighteen young (M age = 26 years) and seventeen old (M age = 62 years) participants completed seven practice sessions (3,024 trials), followed by a single session of full reversal. Training involved consistent mapping, varied mapping, or nonsearch, in which a precue predicted the target location with 100% validity. Younger and older observers demonstrated equivalent learning rates and equivalent disrup- tion following reversal in all training conditions. Results are interpreted within models of visual attention and search.

Younger and older adults were asked to saccade to an orientation-defined target that was presented alone, with a more central distractor, or with a more peripheral distractor. Both age groups exhibited saccadic averaging that was more pronounced in the central distractor condition, wherein older adults had the larger effect. These results are relevant to questions of oculomotor control and also have implications for the study of age differences in other visually guided behaviors.

The purpose of this research is to assess interdisciplinary agreement about the content of an introductory course in statistics and research methods. We compiled a set of methodological and statistical topics from relevant research, introductory textbooks, and course descriptions. Eighteen professors in the natural sciences, social sciences, and education assessed the importance of these topics for a hypothetical introductory statistics and research methods course. Results indicate agreement across disciplines on the relative importance of 97% of the statistical topics, with 75% of these topics deemed to be important. In contrast, there is agreement on the relative importance of only 48% of the research methods topics. The results are useful in the evaluation of existing statistics courses and texts. In addition, the data provide support for interdisciplinary introductory statistics instruction but also raise questions regarding the apparent discipline-specific nature of instruction in methodology.

Reaction times (RTs), saccadic eye movements, and fixation durations were measured while older and younger observers searched visual displays for targets defined by a single feature, luminance contrast or orientation, as well as the conjunction of these two features. Target eccentricity was varied between approximately 4 and 14 deg. Age deficits generally increased in the more difficult conditions. the RT data indicated that age deficits were greatest for conjunction search and on target absent trials. the saccade data showed that on target present trials, age deficits were larger for more eccentric targets, especially in conjunction search. Fixation durations were related by a power function to the number of saccades made prior to a correct response. Whereas the exponent of these power functions was constnat across search condition and age group, the coefficient was larger for older adults. Thus at a fixed number of saccades, when old and young were presumably searching groups of equal size, the...

Hazard perception tests (HPTs) have been successfully implemented in some countries as a part of the driver licensing process and, while their validity has been evaluated, their short-term stability is unknown. This study examined the short-term reliability of a brief, dynamic version of the HPT. Fifty-five young adults (Mage=21 yrs) with at least two years of post-licensing driving experience completed parallel, 21-scene HPTs with a one-month interval separating each test. Minimal practice effects (∼0.1s) were manifested. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) averaged 0.73 for the two forms. The correlation between the two tests was 0.55 (p

INTRODUCTION: The Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ), originally developed in Britain by Reason et al. [Reason, J., Manstead, A., Stradling, S., Baxter, J., & Campbell, K. (1990). Errors and violations on the road: A real distinction? Ergonomics, 33, 1315-1332] is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring driver behaviors linked to collision risk. METHOD: The goals of the study were to adapt the DBQ for a North American driving population, assess the component structure of the items, and to determine whether scores on the DBQ could predict self-reported traffic collisions. RESULTS: Of the original Reason et al. items, our data indicate a two-component solution involving errors and violations. Evidence for a Lapses component was not found. The 20 items most closely resembling those of Parker et al. [Parker, D., Reason, J. T., Manstead, A. S. R., & Stradling, S. G. (1995). Driving errors, driving violations and accident involvement. Ergonomics, 38, 1036-1048] yielded a solution with 3 orthogonal components that reflect errors, lapses, and violations. Although violations and Lapses were positively and significantly correlated with self-reported collision involvement, the classification accuracy of the resulting models was quite poor. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: A North American DBQ has the same component structure as reported previously, but has limited ability to predict self-reported collisions. Keywords: Driver distraction; Language: en

The authors examined the predictive utility of the Roadwise Review and the Hazard Perception Test on a standardized driving assessment using both conventional and alternative scoring criteria in a sample of health older adults (N= 57). The results indicate that both tests can predict passing or failing the road evaluation. The Hazard Perception Test was more consistent in predicting total points and hazardous errors in on-road performance. Future research should examine the predictive validity of these tests in cognitively impaired drivers.

In five experiments, observers were required to detect a texture target and/or identify the orientation of elements composing target and nontarget regions. They were significantly worse at discerning the orientation of nontarget regions than at detecting target presence (Experiment 1). On the other hand, accuracy of identifying target orientation was found to be near 100% (Experiment 2). When observers were required only to identify surround orientation (Experiment 3), accuracy was diminished on target-present trials relative to that on target-absent trials. The superiority of target processing and the interference produced by target presence on surround processing were demonstrated in unpracticed observers (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5, it was found that information regarding target presence is available before information regarding feature values of the target. These findings are consistent with a model of visual attention and search that incorporates a fast generalized difference operator and a slower feature comparison process.