SBIR-STTR Award

Older adults have more traffic convictions and accidents and incur more fatalities per mile driven than any other age group. The aim of the research is two-fold:1) to take the research paradigms demonstrated to be related to a variety of everyday functional vision problems in older adults and embody them in a screening/training device which can be used by physicians and eye-care specialists in diagnosing cognitive/perceptual impairments predictive of accident involvement and2) to further develop useful intervention procedures, individualized to the diagnosis, which can be implemented on the same apparatus and used to prolong safe driving, and improve cognitive/perceptual functioning in general. Unlike the automated perimeters used to measure the visual field, and to diagnose the presence of ocular pathology, the new apparatus under development measures the area of visual awareness in a divided attention situation. This area has been found to shrink for a variety of reasons, and the prevalence of these detrimental effects begins to rise sharply after age 40. The research in Phase I will determine the reliability of a screening test on the new apparatus, further develop several training intervention programs, and assess the effectiveness of demonstration and instructional materials.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:Potential commercial applications of the research include eye-care specialists (ophthalmologists, optometrists), employers of occupational drivers, physicians dealing with the mobility problems of the elderly, the Department of Transportation and sports trainers.National Institute on Aging (NIA)

Many older Americans suffer a loss of independence due to injury from automobile accidents. Recently methods have been discovered for identifying which older individuals are at risk for accidents and for providing interventions to prevent, delay, or reverse the perceptual/cognitive deficits which underlie this vehicle accident proneness. The aim is to further refine the effectiveness of a new instrument designed both to measure the perceptual/cognitive functions (useful field of view UFOV) related to accident involvement and to enhance/maintain these underlying sensory/cognitive functions. More specifically, the research will examine, in an older group of participants, the effects of UFOV training on three measures of driving performance: a) accident frequency, b) driving simulator performance, and c) on-the-road driving performance. Such an instrument would be applicable for identifying at-risk drivers with the Departments of Motor Vehicles, Insurance Companies, etc., and holds the potential to remediate those drivers found to be at risk. In addition, the relationship between specific eye pathologies (e. g., glaucoma) and UFOV performance will be examined. Such information will aid in the identification of those individuals most likely to benefit from training.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research: Potential commercial applications of the research include eye-care specialists (ophthalmologists, optometrists), occupational therapist, rehabilitation hospitals, employers of occupational drivers, insurance companies, physicians dealing with mobility problems of the elderly, the Department of Transportation, and sports trainers.National Institute on Aging (NIA)