Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

overview of their studies: McKenna & Crick, 1997). They found that older,
more experienced drivers had shorter response latencies and had more
correct button presses than young novice drivers. Their method was in fact a
simplification of the method used by Pelz & Krupat (1974) and by Watts &
Quimby (1979). In these early studies, participants were not requested to
press a button, but to move a lever. The riskier the situation got according to
the participant, the more the lever had to be moved in a particular direction.
The button press task has been replicated many times. Most researchers
found, just as McKenna & Crick, that novice drivers had lower scores than
experienced driver (e.g. McKenna, Horswill, & Alexander, 2006; Sexton,
2000; Wallis & Horswill, 2007), but other researchers could not find a
difference between novice drivers and experienced drivers (Chapman &
Underwood, 1998; Underwood, 2000). Sagberg and Bjørnskau (2006) when
using this type of task, also found no overall difference in scores between
young novice drivers and older, more experienced rivers. However in three
situations with more complicated latent hazards in their videos, Sagberg &
Bjørnskau (2006) found that older, more experienced drivers responded
significantly faster after the first signs of a hazard had appeared on the
screen than young novice drivers. In a more advanced version of this type of
testing, participants do not press a button, but point and click at the location
of the developing hazard on the screen with their mouse (Smith et al., 2009)
or press with one of their fingers on a touch screen (Wetton et al., 2010). The
advantage of this method is that it reduces ambiguity about why participants
press the button. When participants only have to press a button, it remains
unknown why they have pressed. It could be that they have detected the
developing overt hazard, but it could also be because of something else. The
particular location on the screen they have clicked provides information
about why they have clicked. Smith et al. (2009) found that the response
latencies of older, more experienced drivers were significantly shorter than
the response latencies of young novice drivers and that this difference was
more pronounced when both groups were sleepy. With the use of a touch
screen, Wetton et al. (2010) also found that the response latencies of older,
more experienced drivers were significantly shorter than the response
latencies of young novice drivers.
Instead of a button press or pointing, it is also possible to stop a video at
moments the first signs of a developing overt latent hazard become visible.
The participant then is asked what could happen next. Jackson, Chapman, &
Crundall (2009) using this method, found that older, more experienced
drivers were significantly better in predicting what could happen next than
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