The role of inhibition of return in the safe driving of elderly persons

Elderly individuals represent a growing portion of our population and a growing number of elderly individuals are driving. A concern arises over the fact that elderly drivers are involved in more crashes than any other age group except for teenagers when the number of miles driven is accounted for. Research has found that deficits in visual attention are related to crashes in elderly drivers. Therefore, the current study attempted to look at a visual attention process, inhibition of return (IOR), and to try to determine its role in safe driving in the elderly. This is the first known study looking at the relationship between these two phenomena. Forty-one individuals aged 55 years and older completed an IOR task and these results were compared with psychological tests and driving evaluations that were completed earlier. Thirteen younger individuals completed the IOR task and served as the control group. An IOR effect was found and it was discovered that older and younger individuals differ in terms of the amount and type of IOR they show. Few correlations between IOR scores and psychological test scores and driving scores were significant. Two of the five regression models including age and IOR were significant. Location-based IOR added predictive ability to models that predicted driving evaluation scores and scanning errors. Because this is a new study in this area of research, subsequent research can expand on this study and make a number of modifications in order to discover more about the role of IOR in the safe driving of the elderly.