Research
The DEER Center conducts research on driver attention while driving. We focus on older adults and on adults with attention disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases and adults who have had a traumatic brain injury or stroke. We also conduct research on young adult drivers who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder.
We also conduct human factors research on driver distraction in collaboration with the Engineering Psychophysiology Laboratory at CMU.
We currently have two studies in progress. The first is examining the relation between time-to-contact judgments and the ability to make left turns across traffic in the AAA Michigan Driving Simulator. This study is a part of our on-going effort to develop reliable and effective methods to assess older drivers for safe-driving ability. One promising tool involves collision detection in oncoming objects. Older adults have been shown to be less able to discriminate between objects on a collision course and those which are not. This study will take the collision detection task on which older adults are known to be impaired and translate it to a virtual driving environment to examine its potential for use as a diagnostic tool. The relationship of various standard perceptual and cognitive abilities to the collision detection task will be examined for potential refinement of the DEER Center cognitive fitness-to-drive assessment task battery.
Our second study is examining the relation of attention deficit symptoms and negative emotion control abilities in young drivers. Previous research has shown a relationship between attention deficits and high occurrences of driving anger. Moreover, adults with attention deficit disorder symptoms express their emotions in more aggressive ways, indicating a lack of emotion control. This study will examine the relations among attention deficit disorder symptoms, negative emotions, emotion control, and maladaptive driving anger, aggression, and behavior in young adults. Participants complete a series of convergent measures to assess whether high anger states, anger expression and emotional inhibition mediate the relationship between attention disorder symptoms and self-reported driving anger, aggression, and unsafe driving behaviors. Results from this study may provide some insight on how to design training programs for young adults with attention disorder symptoms to increase their driving safety.
Go to our Volunteer page if you are interested in participating in these or future DEER Center research studies.
