title: Game-based situation awareness training for child and adult cyclists.
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.
authors.affiliation: Traffic Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Faculty of Arts , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Esko
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0926-1517
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lehtonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Jasmiina
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Airaksinen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Kaisa
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kanerva
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rissanen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Riikka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ränninranta
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine , University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland.
authors.forename: Veera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Åberg
keywords: bicycling; eye movements; hazard perception; serious games; situational awareness; working memory