Bieri, Rahel; Jäger, Michael; Bethencourt, Nora; Mosimann, Urs Peter; Müri, René Martin; Nef, Tobias (2014). Effect of Cognitive Impairment on Driving-Relevant Cognition in Older Persons. Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, 2(1), pp. 11-18. David Publishing
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Intact cognitive abilities are fundamental for driving. Driving-relevant cognition may be affected in older drivers due to
aging or cognitive impairment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive impairment on driving-relevant
cognition in older persons. Performance in selective and divided attention, eye-hand-coordination, executive functions and the ability
to regulate distance and speed of 18 older persons with CI-Group (cognitive impairment group) was compared to performance of
older control group (18 age and gender-matched cognitively normal subjects) and young control group (18 gender-matched young
subjects). The CI-Group showed poorer performance than the other two control groups in all cognitive tasks (significance level (p) <
0.001, effect size (partial η2) = 0.63). Differences between cognitively impaired and cognitively normal subjects were still significant
after controlling for age (effect sizes from 0.14 to 0.28). Dual tasking affected performance of cognitively impaired subjects more
than performance of the other two groups (p = 0.016, partial η2 = 0.14). Results show that cognitive impairment has age-independent
detrimental effects on selective and divided attention, eye-hand-coordination, executive functions and the ability to regulate distance
and speed. Largest effect sizes are found for reaction times in attention tasks.