Analysis of Visual Demands of In-Vehicle Text Displays Reveals an Age- Related Increase in Time Needed to Reallocate Attention to the Road

The purpose of this study was to evaluate age differences in the visual demands imposed by reading invehicle text message displays during simulated driving. Visual demand was operationalized in terms of five eye gaze data parameters. Sixteen young (mean age=20) and 16 older (mean age=77) licensed drivers served as participants. They were required to read variable length text messages from a console mounted display while driving on straight segments on a simulated rural highway. Older drivers required much more time to complete the concurrent text reading task – especially for messages of longer lengths. As hypothesized, most of this age-difference resulted from an increase in the time spent reacquiring the road scene between successive glances to the text display. Lane keeping variability increased and driving speed decreased while reading text for older, but not younger, drivers. This pattern of findings is consistent with prior claims that driving performance in older adults is negatively influenced by problems with attention switching mechanisms.