Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

training program for young novice drivers (SimRAPT) of approximately one
hour was developed to improve visual search for latent hazards. The
scenarios used in SimRAPT came from the scenarios developed for RAPT
(Fisher et al., 2006; Pollatsek et al., 2006; Pradhan et al., 2009). SimRAPT was
based on the principles of active learning from errors (Ivancic & Hesketh,
2000), inducement of arousal to promote memory consolidation (McGaugh et
al., 2002), and instruction aimed at the promotion of far transfer (Brown,
1990). In order to promote self-reflection after a crash or a near crash and to
minimize the tendency to attribute the cause of the crash to the other road
users involved in the situation, participants first had to predict the latent
hazard during a drive in which the latent hazard did not manifest itself.
SimRAPT had clear influences on the visual search patterns of young novice
drivers in quasi (near and far) transfer scenarios. The term 'quasi' is used
here because the effect of the training was not tested in real world traffic, but
in an advanced driving simulator with a considerably better fidelity of the
representation of reality than the low-cost training simulator. With respect to
the first hypothesis, the group that received SimRAPT had 46.92% (26.70
percentage points) more proper gaze directions in these near transfer
scenarios than the control group. This difference was significant and the
effect size was large. With respect to the second hypothesis, the group that
received SimRAPT had 32.64% (17.46 percentage points) more gazes in the
correct direction than the control group in far transfer scenarios. This
difference was significant with a medium effect size. Groeger & Banks (2007)
argued that there is little theoretical foundation and empirical evidence that
traditional basic driver training (formal instruction by a certified driver
trainer aimed at acquiring the skills to pass the driving test) can effectuate far
transfer. The applied learner centered method in SimRAPT and the use of
plan views in order to grasp the abstract principle behind very different
looking situations, may in contrast to traditional driver training have
promoted far transfer, although the effect size was smaller for the far transfer
situations than for near transfer situations. The fact that the effect size was
smaller in the far transfer situations is in support of hypothesis three. As
expected, because of the emphasis on covert latent hazards in the training,
performance after training was better in the covert latent hazard situations
only than in all the latent hazard situations taken together. This is in support
of hypothesis one and two. Similar effects with regard to near transfer and
far transfer were found in the simulator-based training programs that were
developed by Ivancic & Hesketh (2000) and by Wang et al. (2010), but the
former training program was mostly about imminent hazards and the latter
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