Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 53, Issue 2 P130-P141, Copyright © 1998 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

Attention and driving performance in Alzheimer's disease

JM Duchek, L Hunt, K Ball, V Buckles and JC Morris
Program in Occupational Therapy, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA. jand@ot-link.wustl.edu

The present study examined the relationship between visual attention measures and driving performance in healthy older adults and individuals with very mild and mild dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). Subjects were administered an on-road driving assessment and three visual attention tasks (visual search, visual monitoring, and useful field of view). The results indicated that error rate and reaction time during visual search were the best predictors of driving performance. Furthermore, visual search performance was predictive of driving performance above and beyond simple dementia severity and several traditional psychometric tests. The results suggest that general cognitive status may be useful for identifying individuals "at risk" for unsafe driving. However, measures of selective attention may serve to better differentiate safe versus unsafe drivers, especially in the DAT population.

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