USING EYE TRACKING TECHNOLOGY TO EXPLORE SCANNING ABILITIES OF OLD YOUNG ADULTS ON INTERACTIVE DRIVING SIMULATORS

摘要

Driving simulators have been increasing used to determine fitness to drive. While simulators have been shown to have good ecologically validity, what a person actually sees and how it is processed is not explicit. This exploratory study used eye-tracking technology to compare the scanning performance of 10 young adults, 10 older adults, and an adult with visual deficits. Young and old were compared on other measures (e.g., reaction time, mazes), which showed no significant differences in performance. All the healthy older adults had previously driven the simulator without any side effects, although it was at least 8 months prior to this study. Four intersections with either two way or four way stop signs were compared across groups to explore any age differences in scanning using percent of fixation time (time eye gaze is focused on an object/area). Interesting, the older adults showed more evidence of scanning (as opposed to fixating on the road/dashboard directly ahead) with 37% of total fixations compared to 22% of the young adults in the simple two-way stop intersection. In more complex interactions (four-way stop, hidden stop), the difference is less significant, however, older adults tended to have a higher percent of fixation time scanning left and right. Heat maps that graphically show the scanning behaviors will also illustrate how scanning is affected with visual impairment. Implications for the results will be discussed as well as potential research for the future, including on road comparisons.