Measurement invariance of the driving inattention scale (ARDES) across 7 countries.

The Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale (ARDES) is a self-report measure of individual differences in driving inattention. ARDES was originally developed in Spanish (Argentina), and later adapted to other countries and languages. Evidence supporting the reliability and validity of ARDES scores has been obtained in various different countries. However, no study has been conducted to specifically examine the measurement invariance of ARDES measures across countries, thus limiting their comparability. Can different language versions of ARDES provide comparable measures across countries with different traffic regulations and cultural norms? To what extent might cultural differences prevent researchers from making valid inferences based on ARDES measures? Using Alignment Analysis, the present study assessed the approximate invariance of ARDES measures in seven countries: Argentina (n = 603), Australia (n = 378), Brazil (n = 220), China (n = 308). Spain (n = 310), UK (n = 298), and USA (n = 278). The three-factor structure of ARDES scores (differentiating driving errors occurring at Navigation, Manoeuvring and Control levels) was used as the target theoretical model. A fixed alignment analysis was conducted to examine approximate measurement invariance. 12.3 % of the intercepts and 0.8 % of the item-factor loadings were identified as non-invariant, averaging 8.6 % of non-invariance. Despite substantial differences among the countries, sample recruitment or representativeness, study results support resorting to ARDES measures to make comparisons across the country samples. Thus, the range of cultures, laws and collision risk across these 7 countries provides a demanding assessment for a cultural-free inattention while-driving. The alignment analysis results suggest that ARDES measures reach near equivalence among the countries in the study. We hope this study will serve as a basis for future cross-cultural research on driving inattention using ARDES.

Parenting in the context of driving: Spanish adaptation of the Family Climate for Road Safety (FCRSS) for parents and children.

The Family Climate for Road Safety Scale (FCRSS; Taubman - Ben-Ari & Katz - Ben-Ami, 2013) is a comprehensive measure originally developed in Israel to assess parent-children relations in the specific context of driving. The scale consists of seven dimensions: Modelling, Feedback, Communication, Monitoring, Messages, Limits, and Non-commitment to Safety. While the original FCRSS examines the young drivers' perception across the seven domains, a version applicable to parents has also been developed by the same authors. The current study investigates the validity and reliability of the FCRSS-Spain for both parents and young drivers. A total of 377 parents (199 fathers and 178 mothers) and 243 of their children (143 daughters and 100 sons) responded to the FCRSS-Spain versions and provided sociodemographic data. In addition, the young drivers completed the Spanish version of the Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI-Spain). Results from exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) indicate that six out of the seven FCRSS domains were replicable among Spanish drivers. The Messages dimension did not emerge as a consistent factor in the FCRSS for either parents or young drivers. All six factors demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (ordinal alpha coefficients exceeding 0.70), except for Non-commitment to safety. Significant differences were found between mothers and fathers in various FCRSS dimensions in the predicted direction, whereas no significant differences in FCRSS scores were found between young men and young women. As expected, associations were found between parents' scores in various FCRSS dimensions and the reckless, angry, dissociative, anxious, and careful driving styles reported by the young drivers, as well as between young drivers' FCRSS scores and their self-reported reckless, angry, dissociative, anxious, and careful driving styles.

Motorcycle rider error and engagement in distracting activities: A study using the Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale (ARDES-M).

Research on motorcycle rider distraction and inattention is limited, especially when compared to that on car drivers. This study examines motorcycle rider error and its relationship with engagement in distracting activities. Additionally, it provides an adaptation of the Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale for use with motorcycle riders (ARDES-M). A sample of 418 motorcyclists responded to a web questionnaire consisting of the ARDES-M, a self-report measure of Involvement in Distracting Activities (IDA), a measure of everyday inattention (ARCES, Attention Related Cognitive Errors Scale) and socio-demographic and riding-related questions. Riding errors were associated with a higher level of engagement in distracting activities and a greater propensity for inattention in daily life. ARDES-M scores were associated with various types of self-reported traffic crashes and near-crashes, while self-reported distractions (IDA) were only linked with near-crashes. The most widely self-reported distracting activities were using map navigation, listening to the radio or to music and adjusting vehicle devices. The various uses of cell phones were relatively minor. Young riders reported higher levels of engagement in distracting activities and committing more riding errors. The ARDES-M showed good psychometric properties for the sample in Spain.

Assessing Willingness to Engage in Risky Driving Behaviour Using Naturalistic Driving Footage: The Role of Age and Gender.

Young novice drivers are more prone than older drivers to get involved in a risky driving situation. Some young drivers underestimate risk while overestimating their driving abilities, increasing the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviour. Age and inexperience both influence risk estimation, though it is not clear which of these variables is more important. Can drivers' willingness to engage in risky behaviour be assessed in a similar way to hazard perception skill using video-based risky situations? The aim of the current study was to assess whether a video-based tool could measure the willingness to participate in risky driving situations and whether it can distinguish between different types of risky driving scenarios across gender and driver age groups. We also explored the moderating effect of age and gender on drivers' experience in relation to the risky manoeuvres and participants' willingness to engage in risky situations. Participants were presented with naturalistic videos from the perspective of the driver that contained active risky situations (result of driver's own actions) and were asked to make a decision regarding a potential action (to overtake a bus/bicycle or pass through an amber light) and whether they would accelerate at this point. Participants reported that they were more willing to accelerate and overtake cyclists and buses and less willing to pass a light in amber. Young drivers were more willing to both engage in the risky behaviours and accelerate than older drivers, with young males reporting higher scores than the other groups. Gender differences were observed, with males being more prone to overtake and pass through a light in amber than females; however, this difference was not observed for the intention to accelerate. All the above effects remained when we tested the impact of experience on decision making while controlling for age and gender, although driving experience was no longer significant. These results demonstrate that drivers' intention to assume risk can indeed be measured in a similar video-based methodology to that used by hazard perception tests. The findings raise the possibility of assessing and training drivers on a wider range of safety-related behaviours.

Risky Decision-Making and Hazard Prediction are Negatively Related and Could Be Assessed Independently Using Driving Footage.

INTRODUCTION: Traffic collisions are a principal cause of death in Europe, disproportionately affecting young drivers. Driving safety depends not only on our ability to anticipate and respond to dangers on the road but also on the level of risk we are willing to engage within our own driving behaviour. METHODS: Hazard prediction (HPr) and risky decision-making (RDM) tests were given to three groups of young Spaniards (169 participants): 54 non-drivers (M=20), 65 novice (M=21) and, 50 experienced drivers (M=26 years old). Both tests presented participants with video clips of driving recorded from the driver's perspective. The HPr test contained hazardous situations caused by the actions of another road user (eg, a pedestrian crossing the road). Each HPr clip was occluded as a hazard began to unfold and participants were asked to predict "what happens next?" They selected their answer from four on-screen options. The RDM test used clips where any imminent danger would be provoked by the film-car driver's risky behaviour (eg, overtaking illegally). Participants were asked to report the probability of following certain types of risky behaviour (eg, "Would you go forward with the lights on amber?" or "Would you overtake the cyclist/lorry/bus at this point?"). In addition, the effect of the locality of the driving scenarios was manipulated: they could take place in the participant's native country (Spain) or in a different country (UK). RESULTS: Non-drivers and novice drivers were less able to predict upcoming hazards and more likely to make risky decisions. Driving scenarios from another country (UK) provoked riskier decisions than those from the participants' home country (Spain). CONCLUSION: Improvement in HPr skills among novice or new drivers poses a huge challenge as far as driver training is concerned, though it is only part of the solution. Young inexperienced drivers' willingness to engage in risky behaviour also needs to be tackled. Our results suggest that such RDM can be assessed in a similar way to HPr skill, using a naturalistic approach, which raises the possibility of assessing and training drivers on a wider range of safety-related behaviours.

Visual attention in realistic driving situations: Attentional capture and hazard prediction.

In real life, many objects catch our attention involuntarily or exogenously. Exogenous attention occurs fast and its effects are short-lived. In the laboratory, when attentional orientation is studied, both valid and invalid attentional signals are used: the valid ones direct the attention to a location where something relevant is going to appear. The invalid ones occur in a location where nothing relevant is going to happen. Usually, performance is improved when valid signals rather than invalid ones are presented. This work is novel in that it explores the effects of attentional capture and driving experience in situations of day-to-day driving while participants carry out a Hazard Prediction task. We created new Hazard Prediction (HPr) and Risk Estimation (RE) tests when driving by selecting 48 short videos recorded in a realistic way from the perspective of a car driver. We created valid and invalid trials by selecting videos in which a what?? was presented in the same spatial location as the one where the hazard was beginning to develop or in a different location. Simple situations, with only one developing hazard, were also presented. A total of 92 participants (30 experienced drivers, 32 novices and 30 with no experience) were placed in the position of the driver and answered the questions: 1) What will happen after the video is cut? 2) To what extent do you consider this situation risky? The results from the Hazard Prediction test replicate the attentional capture effect in complex driving situations, with invalid trials obtaining the worst results, followed by valid and simple ones. Participants with experience obtained better scores than novices, and novices were better than drivers without experience. No interaction between attentional orientation and experience was found, suggesting the obligatory and automatic nature of orientation processes, which do not appear to be compensated for by driving experience. No significant differences were found for the Risk Estimation test.

Hazard Perception and Prediction test for walking, riding a bike and driving a car: "Understanding of the global traffic situation".

To "put oneself in the place of other road users" may improve understanding of the global traffic situation. It should be useful enabling drivers to anticipate and detect obstacles in time to prevent accidents to other road users, especially those most vulnerable. We created a pioneering Hazard Perception and Prediction test to explore this skill in different road users (pedestrians, cyclists and drivers), with videos recorded in naturalistic scenarios: walking, riding a bicycle and driving a car. There were 79 participants (30 pedestrians, 14 cyclists, 13 novice drivers and 22 experienced drivers). Sixty videos of hazardous traffic situations were presented, divided into 2 blocks of 30 videos each: 10 walking, 10 riding a bicycle, 10 driving a car. In each situation presented, we evaluated the performance of the participants carrying out the task of predicting the hazard and estimating the risk. In the second block, after they had carried out the task, we gave them feedback on their performance and let them see the whole video (i.e., checking what happened next). The results showed that the holistic test had acceptable psychometric properties (Cronbach's alpha = .846). The test was able to discriminate between the different conditions manipulated: a) between traffic hazards recorded from different perspectives: walking, riding a bicycle and driving a car; b) between participants with different user profiles: pedestrians, cyclists and drivers; c) between the two test blocks: the first evaluation only and the second combining evaluation with this complex intervention. We found modal bias effects in both Hazard Perception and Prediction; and in Risk Estimation.

Adaptation of the multidimensional driving styles inventory for Spanish drivers: Convergent and predictive validity evidence for detecting safe and unsafe driving styles.

The Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI; Taubman - Ben-Ari et al., 2004) is a well-known and useful instrument that allows us to identify not only "maladaptive" Driving Styles (DS) in order to modify them, but also "adaptive" DS to encourage safe driving. The aim of this study was to adapt the MDSI to the Spanish spoken in Spain and to the rules and driving habits of Spaniards. The Argentinian version of the MDSI was taken as the source version. The sample consisted of 1173 drivers, who completed the Spanish version of the MDSI. The factor structure was analysed by means of an Exploratory Factor Analysis (AFE) and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (AFC). The 6-factor structure of the Argentinian version of the MDSI was replicated with higher internal consistency values for each of the DS. The original Argentinian and the Spanish versions share 23 items, indicating a relevant overlap in the construct. A cluster analysis grouped the DS into two groups: maladaptive and adaptive. Significant associations were found between DS measures and demographic variables (gender, age, and education level), driving history and theoretically related constructs like the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT); Lapses, Errors, Violations; Angry Driving; and Sensitivity to Rewards. The Spanish MDSI provides valid measures that could help us understand complex driving behaviours and promote safe driving.

How are distractibility and hazard prediction in driving related? Role of driving experience as moderating factor.

Distraction constitute one of the 'five fatal' behaviours that contribute to road trauma, and some people may be more susceptible to it than others. It is also known that a greater ability to predict danger is related to a lower probability of suffering accidents. It could be hypothesised that drivers with a higher tendency to distraction are worse at predicting traffic hazards, but to what extent might driving experience serve to mitigate this tendency to distraction? The current study collected self-reported attentional errors from drivers by using the Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale (ARDES-Spain) in order to examine whether novice drivers suffered from inattention more than experienced drivers. The results demonstrated that novice drivers scored more highly on ARDES than experienced drivers. ARDES scores were then related to performance in a Hazard Prediction test, where participants had to report what hazard was about to happen in a series of video clips that occlude just as the hazard begins to develop. While experienced drivers were better at the Hazard Prediction test than novice drivers, those participants who reported fewer attention errors were also better able to detect the upcoming hazard following occlusion. In addition, our results demonstrate a relationship between self-reported attentional errors and the ability to predict upcoming hazards on the road, with driving experience having a moderating role. In the case of novice drivers, as their scores in the Manoeuvring Errors ARDES factor increase, their ability in Hazard Prediction diminishes, while for experienced drivers the increase is not significant. Guidance on how to improve training for drivers in order to mitigate the effects of inattention on driving safety can be addressed.

A comparison of hazard perception and hazard prediction tests across China, Spain and the UK.

Hazard perception (HP) is the ability to spot on-road hazards in time to avoid a collision. This skill is traditionally measured by recording response times to hazards in video clips of driving, with safer, experienced drivers often out-performing inexperienced drivers. This study assessed whether HP test performance is culturally specific by comparing Chinese, Spanish and UK drivers who watched clips filmed in all three countries. Two test-variants were created: a traditional HP test (requiring timed hazard responses), and a hazard prediction test, where the film is occluded at hazard-onset and participants predict what happens next. More than 300 participants, across the 3 countries, were divided into experienced and inexperienced-driver groups. The traditional HP test did not discriminate between experienced and inexperienced drivers, though participant nationality influenced the results with UK drivers reporting more hazards than Chinese drivers. The hazard prediction test, however, found experienced drivers to out-perform inexperienced drivers. No differences were found for nationality, with all nationalities being equally skilled at predicting hazards. The results suggest that drivers' criterion level for responding to hazards is culturally sensitive, though their ability to predict hazards is not. We argue that the more robust, culturally-agnostic, hazard prediction test appears better suited for global export.

The moderating effects of vigilance on other components of attentional functioning.

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggested that vigilance may moderate the functioning of other attentional components. However, vigilance is usually neglected when comparing the attentional functioning between groups of clinical and/or healthy participants. NEW METHOD: We combined data from several studies using the Attention Network Test for Interactions and Vigilance (ANTI-V), which includes a vigilance measure plus phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control scores. We estimated, for the first time, the reliability of the vigilance performance indices in the ANTI-V, by analyzing split-half correlations of 10,000 permutations of the trials. In addition, we tested whether a different attentional functioning would be found across the group of healthy participants varying in their vigilance performance, by using a considerably larger sample size (226 participants) than previous studies. RESULTS: Vigilance indices were the most reliable among the different attentional scores. Regression models show an inverse relationship between vigilance and phasic alertness and executive control. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: No previous study has analysed the reliability of the vigilance performance indices in the ANTI-V. In comparison with other ANT variations, the ANTI-V provides a reliable measure of vigilance together with the typical phasic alertness, orienting and executive control scores. In addition, we provide estimates, based on a large sample size, of the magnitude of the link between vigilance and other attentional functions. CONCLUSIONS: When assessing the multiple functions of attention, the current study highlights the importance of measuring vigilance, which may modulate the functioning of other attentional components, such as phasic alertness or executive control.

Which drivers are at risk? Factors that determine the profile of the reoffender driver.

Finding appropriate assessment tools to predict recidivism is a difficult aim, which may lead to actions with unintended consequences. Aims don't have consequences. At times, the research has been used to justify penalising reoffenders with punitive measures rather than treating them with effective psychological interventions. This study aims to contribute to untangling and assessing the potential predictors of reoffender drivers. In this study, 296 drivers: 86 reoffenders (7 women and 79 men) and 206 non-reoffenders (105 women and 101 men) responded to a battery of assessment questionnaires in which they were asked for demographic data (i.e. gender and age), alcohol consumption habits, driving styles, general estimation of risk in everyday life, sensitivity to reward and punishment and anger while driving. The results provided a logistical regression model capable of predicting reoffending and explaining 34% of variability, successfully classifying 77.6% of participants. In this model, the best predictor of reoffending is higher consumption of alcohol (Alcohol Use Disorders, AUD), followed by incautious driving (since cautious driving style correlates negatively with reoffending) and to a lesser extent, infraestimation of recreational risk and a greater sensitivity to reward. Relying on results to predict recidivism could be important to plan better interventions to prevent it.

What happens when drivers face hazards on the road?

The current study aims to obtain knowledge about the nature of the processes involved in Hazard Perception, using measurement techniques to separate and independently quantify these suspected sub-processes: Sensation, Situation Awareness (recognition, location and projection) and decision-making. It applies Signal Detection Theory analysis to Hazard Perception and Prediction Tasks. To enable the calculation of Signal Detection Theory parameters, video-recorded hazardous vs. quasi-hazardous situations were presented to the participants. In the hazardous situations it is necessary to perform an evasive action, for instance, braking or swerving abruptly, while the quasi-hazardous situations do not require the driver to make any evasive manoeuvre, merely to carry on driving at the same speed and following the same trajectory. A first Multiple Choice Hazard Perception and Prediction test was created to measure participants' performance in a What Happens Next? Task. The sample comprised 143 participants, 47 females and 94 males. Groups of non-offender drivers (learner, novice and experienced) and offender drivers (novice and experienced) were recruited. The Multiple Choice Hazard Perception and Prediction test succeeded in finding differences between drivers according to their driving experience. In fact, differences exist with regard to the level of hazard discrimination (d' prime) by drivers with different experience (learner, novice and experienced drivers) and profile (offenders and non-offenders) and these differences emerge from Signal Detection Theory analysis. In addition, it was found that experienced drivers show higher Situation Awareness than learner or novice drivers. On the other hand, although offenders do worse than non-offenders on the hazard identification question, they do just as well when their Situation Awareness is probed (in fact, they are as aware as non-offenders of what the obstacles on the road are, where they are and what will happen next). Nevertheless, when considering the answers participants provided about their degree of cautiousness, experienced drivers were more cautious than novice drivers, and non-offender drivers were more cautious than offender drivers. That is, a greater number of experienced and non-offender drivers chose the answer "I would make an evasive manoeuvre such as braking gradually".

The influence of differences in the functioning of the neurocognitive attentional networks on drivers' performance.

Considerable research efforts are currently being devoted to analysing the role that the attentional system plays in determining driving behaviour, with the ultimate objective of reducing the number of attention-related accidents. The present study aims to assess the influence of differences in the functioning of the three attentional networks (executive control, attentional orienting and alerting) when drivers have to deal with some common hazardous situations, for example, when an oncoming car or a pedestrian unexpectedly crosses their trajectory. Multiple measures of participants' attentional functioning were obtained from a computer-based neurocognitive test: the Attention Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance (ANTI-V). These measures were compared to performance in a driving simulator where different types of hazardous situations were presented. Correlation and linear regression analyses revealed significant associations between individual attentional measures and driving performance in specific traffic situations. In particular, a higher attentional orienting score on the ANTI-V was associated with safer driving in situations where a single precursor anticipated the hazard source, whereas in complex situations with multiple potential hazard precursors, higher attentional orienting scores were associated with delayed braking. Additionally, partial evidence of a relationship between crash occurrence and the functioning of the executive control and the alerting networks was found. Overall, the current research would be helpful to better understand the role that each attentional network (executive control, attentional orienting and alerting) play in safe driving, and thus to develop efficient countermeasures to reduce attention-related crashes.

Conocimiento de las normas de tráfico en función de la edad y de la importancia para la seguridad vial / Knowledge of Traffic Rules According to the Age and the Importance for Road Safety

Un déficit en la memoria producido por la edad puede influir en el conocimiento de la normativa de tráfico. El presente estudio analiza las diferencias en el conocimiento de la normativa en función de la edad e importancia para la seguridad vial. Participaron 300 personas (18-75 años). Se elaboró un cuestionario de conocimiento sobre normativa de tráfico, según la importancia que desempeñan para la seguridad vial (poco importantes, importantes y muy importantes). En general, el conocimiento de los conductores sobre la normativa de tráfico fue pobre. Contrario a lo esperado, el rendimiento de los conductores mayores no siempre fue inferior al de los otros grupos de edad, presentando mejores resultados en preguntas poco importantes y muy importantes.

Age-associated memory impairment could worsen the knowledge of traffic rules. The present study analyses the differences in the knowledge of the traffic rules according to the age and the importance for road safety. 300 drivers participated (18-75 years-old). A questionnaire was developed to assess the knowledge of the traffic rules according to the importance for road safety (less important, important, and more important questions). Generally, the knowledge of the traffic rules was poor among drivers of all ages. Older drivers' scores were not always lower than the younger and adult drivers. These results are a little surprising and not the outcome we originally predicted, they show the older drivers had far better results in the less important and more important questions.

The effects of sleep deprivation on the attentional functions and vigilance.

The study of sleep deprivation is a fruitful area of research to increase our knowledge of cognitive functions and their neural basis. In the current work, 26 healthy young adults participated in a sleep deprivation study, in which the Attentional Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance (ANTI-V) was performed at 10a.m. after a night of normal sleep and again at 10 a.m. after 25.5-27.5 h of total sleep deprivation. The ANTI-V is an experimental task that provides measures of alerting, orienting and executive control attentional functions. Compared with previous versions, the ANTI-V includes a vigilance task, more reliable auditory alerting signals, non-predictive peripheral orienting cues, and also a neutral no-cue condition allowing the analysis of reorienting costs and orienting benefits. Thus, new evidence to evaluate the influence of sleep deprivation on attentional functioning is provided. Results revealed differences in both tonic and phasic alertness after sleep deprivation. Vigilance performance was deteriorated, while a warning tone was more helpful to increase participants' alertness, resulting in slightly faster RT and, in particular, fewer errors. The reorienting costs of having an invalid spatial cue were reduced after sleep loss. No sleep deprivation effect on the executive control measure was found in this study. Finally, since no control group was used, particular precautions were taken to reduce the influence of potential practice effects.

A driving-emulation task to study the integration of goals with obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs.

This research aims to analyse how drivers integrate the information provided by traffic signs with their general goals (i.e. where they want to go). Some previous studies have evaluated the comparative advantages of obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs using a judgement task. In this work, a new experimental task with greater similarity to driving situations is proposed. Participants imagine they are driving a vehicle and must make right or left turn manoeuvres according to a previously indicated objective and the information from obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs. Eighty-two participants took part in two different experiments. According to the results, an obligatory traffic sign is associated with faster and more accurate responses only when the participant's initial objective is allowed. When the initial objective was not allowed, an advantage in accuracy was observed with prohibitory traffic signs and there was no significant difference in reaction time between the two types of sign. These results suggest that having an obligatory traffic sign may facilitate a correct response when the driver's goal is effectively allowed, whereas a prohibitory traffic sign could be more effective in preventing error when the driver has a not-allowed goal in mind. However, processing a prohibitory sign requires an extra inference (i.e. deciding which is the allowed manoeuvre), and thus the potential advantage in reaction time of the prohibitory sign may disappear. A second experiment showed that the results could not be explained by a potential congruency effect between the location (left or right) of the road signs and the position of the key or the hand used to respond (such as the Simon effect or the spatial Stroop effect). Also, an increase in the difficulty of the task (using an incongruent hand to respond) affected performance more strongly in experimental conditions that required making inferences. This made the advantage of the obligatory sign over the prohibitory sign in this condition more noteworthy. The evidence gathered in the current study could be of particular interest in some applied research areas, such as the assessment of road traffic signalling strategies or the ergonomic design of GPS navigation systems.

Attentional networks functioning, age, and attentional lapses while driving.

OBJECTIVE: Based on Posner's (1994) model of attentional functions, the relationship between age and personal proneness to attention-related errors while driving and the functioning of the 3 attentional networks were explored by means of attentional behavioral measures and self-report data. METHODS: A sample of 55 drivers was drawn from the general population of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Attention Network Test for Interactions (ANTI) (Callejas et al. 2004) task was used to obtain behavioral measures of the attentional networks, and we used the Attention-Related Driving Error Scale (ARDES) (Ledesma et al. 2010) questionnaire to obtain a self-report measure of attention-related driving errors. RESULTS: Drivers reporting the greatest propensity to experience attention-related errors showed an overall slowdown in performance, less endogenous preparation for high = priority warning signs, and a better response to conflict in the presence of valid cues than drivers less prone to attention-related errors while driving. Older participants showed a slowdown in performance, less endogenous preparation for high-priority warning signs, and worse cognitive control when solving conflict in comparison with younger drivers. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that each group variable, attention-related error proneness and age, shows a particular combination of attentional network functioning that implies different ways of being distracted, which have different practical implications for safe driving. It can be inferred that drivers who are more prone to commit attentional errors while driving run less risk in situations in which they can deal with response conflict in the presence of valid cues because of the particular way in which their attentional networks are combined when a valid cue is present, could serve to compensate, with a better response conflict, their general slowdown and less endogenous preparedness for high-priority signs. It can be inferred that older drivers might show a reduction of the general state of alertness to signs that indicate the presence of a dangerous driving situation and in solving conflict in traffic circumstances.

Measuring vigilance while assessing the functioning of the three attentional networks: the ANTI-Vigilance task.

Vigilance could be a crucial aspect of attention that may modulate the functioning of the attentional system. Some behavioural tests, such as the Attention Network Test (ANT), have been developed to obtain an individual index of the three attentional networks (alertness, orientation, and executive control). However, alerting network measures are usually inferred using a phasic alertness task, and some indirect indexes of tonic alertness or vigilance have been proposed but not properly evaluated. The general aim for the present study is to provide the ANT with a direct measure of vigilance and then to analyse the relationship between this measure and other alternative indirect indexes. The obtained results suggest that the proposed new test (ANTI-Vigilance or ANTI-V) is useful to achieve a direct measure of vigilance and could be considered as a new tool available in cognitive, clinical or behavioural neurosciences for analysing vigilance in addition to the usual ANT scores. Other alternative indexes (such as global reaction time and global accuracy averaged across conditions) are only moderately correlated to a direct vigilance measure. As a consequence, although they may be to some extent related to the participants' vigilance level, they could not be used isolatedly as appropriate indexes of vigilance. Also, the role played by these global measures in the ANT task, which have been previously associated with some performance measures in applied areas (such as driving performance), is discussed.

Encoding time and signs exposure time in the representation of diagrammatic deontic meanings.

It has been proposed that prohibition and obligation be represented in different ways in reasoning with deontic information (Bucciarelli & Johnson-Laird, 2005). Obligations are salient in permissible situations and prohibitions in impermissible situations. In some specific cases, differential initial representations are also consistently predicted from the comprehension of negations, if prohibition is considered as the negation of an obligation. Three experiments evaluate whether traffic signs of prohibition and obligation speed up the response time to the proposed direction represented and whether this advantage remains when people have more time to think. When making judgements about the manoeuvre performed by a vehicle, participants' response times are consistent with the predicted representation when they have a short time (i.e., 300ms) to understand the premise. In this case they represent what is permissible by obligatory signs and also what is impermissible by prohibitory signs. However, if they have more time (i.e., 1000 ms) to understand the premise, they still represent what is permissible by obligatory signs but they seem to change their initial representations to what is permissible by prohibitory signs.