Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

originally rated as dangerous were also the moments that were remembered
a week later. The moments that had not induced arousal were not
remembered. Of the situations that participants could recall, details such as
the colour of the car that caused the hazard were not remembered, but the
location of that car and the manoeuvre it made, were. Chapman & Groeger
(2004) have described experiments where participants had to rate the risk
while they watched video clips from the driver's perspective at moments
when the driver in the video negotiated a junction. Directly after this session
the participants had to recognize the situations they had rated in videos that
were mixed with very similar looking situations they had not seen before.
Although the authors did not find a simple overall relationship between
subjective risk ratings and recognition sensitivity, they found enhanced
recognition for the riskier situations, whereas recognition of the less
dangerous situations was impaired. In an experiment conducted by
Koustanaï et al. (2008), participants that drove in a simulator were
confronted with predictable hazardous behaviour and almost unpredictable
behaviour of other road users. When experienced drivers were confronted
with unexpected behaviour of another road user and had a crash to their
surprise, they had learned from this situation. This is to say, most of the
times they could avoid a crash three drives of ten minutes later in a similar
situation, but in an environment in which this behaviour of that other road
user was more predictable. On the other hand, when experienced drivers
were first confronted with dangerous behaviour of another road user that
was predictable an most of the times the drivers could avoid a crash, these
drivers behaved worse and had more crashes in similar situations three
drives of ten minutes later in a similar situation that was somewhat less
predictable.
In neurobiological studies it was found that release of glucocorticoids
(stress hormones) when aroused, act on the hippocampus (component of the
limbic system that plays an important role in the storage in long-term
memory and the retrieval from long-term memory), the amygdala and the
PFC in such a way that it promotes memory consolidation (e.g. McGaugh,
2000; McGaugh et al., 2002). There is however not a linear relationship
between arousal and memory enhancement. Only moderate arousal
enhances memory. Extreme low and high levels of arousal seem to impair
memory consolidation (e.g. Richter-Levin & Akirav, 2000).
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