Traffic scene related
change blindness in
older drivers
Professor: Liu
Student: Ruby
Motive & purpose
• Motive
– Most people can’t find the difference when the
environment is changed, especially in the older
people.
• Purpose
– They want to know that does the driver’s age
can affect the detection of change in driving
related images.
Reference
Authors
Year
Result
Simons et al
2000
Change blindness could occur in the absence of a visual
disruption if the momentary of the changing image.
Simons et al.
Rensink
Rensink
O’Regan et al.
O’Regan et al.
Levin & simons
2000
2002
2000
2000
1999
1997
A brief visual disruption occurs then change image is presented.
Visual disruption includes saccades.
Blank screens.
Blinks.
Mud splashes.
Motion picture cuts or changes in camera angle.
Ball, vance , Edwards, 2002
Normal aging often have a reduction in visual ability and speed
and Wadley
of cognitive processing.
Jackson and Owsley 2002
Method
• Participants
– 25 younger adults (mean age is 22.3 years)
– 13 older adults (mean age is 68.5 years)
– 20/25 visual
• Equipment
– A personal computer by using presentation.
– Touch screen monitor.
Method
• Stimuli
– 47 pairs of pictures.
– Creating the pictures by using Adobe Photo
Shop version 5.5.
– It takes 4000 ms on the changing pictures (2000
ms per picture).
– Each trial has 5 cycles.
Method
• Procedure
– Two practice sessions.
• Touch the white dot on the screen. (5 places)
– Training session (5 trials)
• 3 trials have change and 2 trials don’t have change.
– Every participant viewed 94 randomly ordered
trials.
• 47 change and 47 non-change.
Results
• Response accuracy
– Younger drivers have greater accuracy than
older drivers.
– In the changing pictures, older testers have
fewer changes than younger testers.
– In the non-changing pictures, older drivers
performed lower level of younger drivers.
Results
• Response times
– Younger drivers responded more faster than
older drivers.
– Younger drivers have fewer non-responses than
older drivers.
Results
• Response behavior
– In the element changed, younger drivers have
quickly response time than older drivers.
– Younger drivers have lower percentage of nonresponses in the change pictures.
Results
• Pictures: non-change
– Testers asked to indicate non-change by
depressing the space bar.
– Older drivers failed to respond more often than
younger drivers.
– Older drivers had a greater percentage of false
positive responses than younger drivers.
Discussion
• The results of the study has three points:
1. Reduced accuracy.
2. Increased reaction times.
3. More false positive responses in
identifying change.
Discussion
• Even we had normal visual acuity for all
participants but some older drivers have eye
disease like: cataract, glaucoma, it would let
them lose the ability of focus on objects
presented at near distances.
Discussion
• Older drivers have slower response times
than younger drivers, may be related to the
older driver have decreased visual
processing speed and reduced visual
attention.
• The older drivers have increased inability to
discover the change may probability
increase the risk of car crashes for them.
Discussion
• For older individuals, reductions in vision,
cognitive processing and physical sensitive are
likely to contribute to poorer performance on
our change blindness task.