The new study suggests that the slow development of an adolescent's working memory may have a strong association with the vehicular crashes that most teens get involved in. This leads to making a cognitive development screening as a potentially new strategy to identify intervention to avoid putting teens at more risk of being involved in vehicular accidents. With this new information, tailor-made interventions will now be made possible, saving more lives in the future.
A team of researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) led the study on the development of the working memory in relation to vehicular accidents. The paper entitled "Working Memory Development and Motor Vehicle Crashes in Young Drivers" was recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The researchers examined the collected data from 188 participants in Philadelphia. All the participants were part of a larger group under a six-wave study survey from where they were between 10 to 12 years old. The study was started in 2005 that lasted until the participating youth members have turned 18 to 20 years old. This is the first longitudinal study that focuses on the impact of the development of a teen's working memory and its strong relationship to risk-related behaviors that they exhibit. The same group were asked to participate in another survey that included their driving experience.
"We found that young adults who exhibit a slower development in their working memory are more likely to be involved in a car crash," Elizabeth A Walshe said. She is the lead author of the study and a fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP.
The working memory of an individual begins to develop when he enters into adolescence and into the twenties. It is a process that happens in the frontal lobe associated with moment-to-moment tasks that is complex in nature similar to the tasks required in driving. Monitoring, scanning, and updating the information in real-time while on the road are just some of the multitasking that every driver has to manage.
"Safe driving involves managing multiple tasks in real time. It includes steering, adjusting speed, not to mention the other distractors drivers are exposed to like cell phones and other vehicle passengers," researcher said in their paper. All these tasks put pressure on a person's working memory. It affects primarily a young driver who has yet to fully learn how to automate most of these driving routines.
Several studies still need to be conducted to provide different types of driver techniques and training to ensure that every young driver goes out into the road based on their working memory development.
