Abstract
Safe cycling requires situation awareness (SA), which is the basis for recognizing and anticipating hazards. Children have poorer SA than adults, which may put them at risk. This study investigates whether cyclists' SA can be trained with a video-based learning game. The effect of executive working memory on SA was also studied. Thirty-six children (9–10 years) and 22 adults (21–48 years) played the game. The game had 30 video clips filmed from a cyclist's perspective. Each clip was suddenly masked and two or three locations were presented. The player's task was to choose locations with a potential hazard and feedback was given for their answers. Working memory capacity (WMC) was tested with a counting span task. Children's and adults' performance improved while playing the game, which suggests that playing the game trains SA. Adults performed better than children, and they also glanced at hazards more while the video was playing. Children expectedly had a lower WMC than adults, but WMC did not predict performance within the groups. This indicates that SA does not depend on WMC when passively viewing videos.
Highlights
Cycling is a common and growing mode of transportation especially in urban areas
The current results suggest that the game could be used to train child and adult cyclists’ situation awareness (SA), and help them to anticipate and avoid hazards
Children had a lower performance in the game as well as a lower Working memory capacity (WMC)
Summary
Cycling is a common and growing mode of transportation especially in urban areas. While the overall health benefits of cycling outweigh the negative effects of crashes, injuries and fatalities are a considerable problem [1,2,3]. Children who cycle are a particular risk group in traffic. In the European Union between 2008 and 2010, 59% of children who were non-fatally injured in traffic were cyclists [4]. In Finland between 1998 and 2007, 47% of injuries among 0–14 year olds requiring hospital care occurred in cycling [5]. Children are often involved in crashes when they have entered the roadway from driveways, sidewalks or mid-block in a manner which suggests that
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