Publication Date

Summer 2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Advisor

Evan Palmer; Gregory Feist; Mark Van Selst

Abstract

Hazard perception is the ability of a driver to anticipate emerging dangers. Driving is a complex activity requiring attention to various stimuli to prevent accidents. Prior studies have shown that older, experienced drivers detect more cues and perceive hazards better than younger, inexperienced drivers. Attention is multifaceted, and three visual attention networks were focused on in the study: alerting (readiness), orienting (spatial focus), and executive control (distraction inhibition). A sample of 95 participants completed two tasks: The Attention Network Test was used to assess these three attention networks, and to measure road hazard awareness, participants viewed short dashcam videos (~233 ms), half of which contained a road hazard and half of which did not. The relationship between the three attention networks and hazard detection performance was examined using hierarchical multiple regression, allowing performance variance due to age and driving experience to be accounted for in the statistical analysis. Results indicated that none of the attention networks predicted hazard detection performance after accounting for driving experience. However, the orienting network showed the strongest (yet statistically non-significant) association with hazard detection. Notably, age was negatively correlated with the orienting network, and age was significantly associated with poorer hazard perception. These findings suggest that while attention may contribute to hazard detection, the attention network test and hazard perception task used in this study did not demonstrate this association.

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