Heart rate as a physiologic response to scenarios on the driving simulator

Abstract

Introduction: Since driving is such a big part of the American culture and considered an instrumental activity of daily living, it is a critical area for assessment and intervention for occupational therapists. The overall goal of this study was to examine the use of a driving simulator as an occupational therapy assessment and intervention tool. To achieve this, this specific study considered how older adults respond to critical incidents on a driving simulator by comparing their performance with young adults specifically using response time, as measured by heart rate for detection of the incident (perception time) and heart rate recovery time after a critical incident. Methods: Seventy-one participants (33 young, 38 old) completed three scenarios on the STISIM Drive Driving Simulator WT-2000. The scenarios were two familiarization runs and a scenario developed by the researchers, the KANDY Scenario. Baseline heart rate, time to peak heart rate after appearance of each critical incident (response), and time back to baseline heart rate (recovery) were recorded. Results: The data failed to show a difference between older participants and young participants, with one exception, recovery time to critical incident 1 (t=2.959, ρ=0.006). Discussion: The recovery time to critical incident 1 was statistically significant due to the fact this was the first opportunity for participants to react quickly. Participants habituated to each subsequent incident, and felt the safety of the driving simulator. Conclusion: These results suggest that efficacy of the driving simulator may be an effective tool for intervention and assessment.