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

Frontiers in Psychology

Christin Janouch¹  Claudia Voelcker-Rehage¹  Konstantin Wechsler²  Mathias Haeger²  Otmar Bock²  Uwe Drescher² 

[1] Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Institute of Human Movement Science and Health, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany;Institute of Physiology and Anatomy, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany;

关键词: task switching;    dual-tasking;    aging;    cognitive-motor interference;    ecological validity;    virtual reality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00910

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown