Age, cognitive style, and traffic signs

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Age, cognitive style, and traffic signs

• Professor Liu
• Student Ruby

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objective

• This study discuss the young and older adults of
  field dependence on traffic signs.
• To assess to what extent changes in traffic signs
  could render them more easily recognizable by car
  drivers.

3
References

• Drivers they observed in a real driving situation
  more frequently did not obey a Do not enter
  sign.
• when it was presented directly in its environment
  than when it was isolated by a square surface of
  1 m on each side.
• Hoskovec, Stikar, and Raouf, 1974
• Elderly drivers have more accidents by kilometer
  driven than the population and also more often
  legally responsible for these accidents.
• Waller, 1988 Rothengatter Brouwer,
  1991

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References

• People differ in perceiving the world and these
  differences have many times been related to the
  concept of field-dependence/independence.
• Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodenough, Karp,
  1962
• Field dependent subjects are less efficient than
  field-independent ones in detecting indices
  relevant to the driving task.
• Goodenough, 1976 Mihal Barret, 1976

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Exp 1 - Methods

• Assessment of effects of age and cognitive style
  on a recognition task
• Subjects
• Younger group (16 people, 8 women 8 men)
• age from 19-40 years old, M26
• Older group (7 women 11 men)
• age from 56-82 years old, M67
• Using Group Embedded Figures Test to find the
  field dependence/independence.

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Methods

• Stimuli
• 20 traffic signs.
• 4 were used the references and not appear in the
  analysis.
• Each of the 16 signs was presented against each
  of three backgrounds and at each of two
  positions.
• Each condition presented three times.
• The signs were in a rural and urban scene.

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Methods

• Procedure
• Two traffic signs were presented on a black
  screen for 2 sec, then blank for 500 mses, and
  then the target sign appeared.
• Then subject response which position the target
  get in.

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Result and Discussion

• Personality variables
• Field dependent as well as the older subjects had
  longer recognition times than field independent
  (younger).
• The interaction between was significant (Plt.01),
  the older subjects are more from higher scores on
  the GEFT than the youngers.
• Traffic signs
• RT as a function of the category to which a sign
  belonged (plt.05).
• The background on which a sign appeared affected
  time to recognize (plt.05).
• The position at which the sign appeared had a
  significant effect on RT (plt.05).

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Result and Discussion

• The influence of the backgrounds only showed up
  in the Prescription and Indication categories.
• The effect of the position in which a sign
  appeared was significant only in the Construction
  category.

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Result and Discussion

• The personality explain more than 53 of the
  observed variance of the results whereas the
  factors associated with the environment explain
  only 14.
• ?the urban of the personality in the efficacy of
  extracting information from the environment.
• The subjects are facing a sign which presents a
  low spatial frequency, but not in the high
  spatial frequency.

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Exp 2 - Methods

• Assessment of modifications of pictographs of
  traffic signs to make them more conspicuous and
  faster to recognize
• Subjects
• Younger group (12 people, age of 26 years)
• Older group (12 people, age of 62 years)
• Using the Group Embedded Figures Test to know the
  cognition style.
• Two conditions in this study
• One being the detection or localization of a
  traffic sign embedded in its context.
• The other being the recognition or identification
  of a traffic sign.

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Methods

• Stimuli
• There had eight signs presented to subjects.
• The signs were effectively used were two existing
  signs.
• One announcing the beginning of a gravel road.
• The other the beginning of grooved pavement.

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Methods

• Procedure
• For the identification part, present a traffic
  sign on a black background for 2 sec, which was
  the target.
• For the localization part, the traffic signs
  appeared on one of three graphic backgrounds.

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Results

• The personality factors showed that the older
  people were slower to respond and they were more
  field-dependent than younger.
• The modifications of the pictographs affected the
  time to identify the signs (Plt.05).

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Results
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Results

• Detection
• The time taken to localize the signs was
  influenced by the personality measures of the
  subjects.
• More field independent people, the RT was faster.

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Discussion

• In many situations the RTs were essentially
  independent of the number of non-targets.
• For detection, the subjects only had a coarse
  localization to perform and this could well be
  done with effortless processing.

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Discussion

• The field-dependent scorers were still slower
  than the field-independent scorers at the
  localization of the target.
• To the identification part of the study, the
  modifications had a reduction in time taken for
  recognition of more than 90 msec.
• ?present a modification of a sign with the equal
  modification of the other one thus rendering the
  task more difficult.

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Discussion

• Older field dependent drivers were slower RT, and
  the young field independent were the faster.
• ?greater attention should be paid to the
  modification of some traffic signs, especially
  for the older drivers.