Development of a computerized, ecologically valid driving assessment program : the neurocognitive driving test. Dissertation Drexel University, College of Arts and Sciences.

Research done in driving assessment of brain injured individuals has relied on methods limited to measures of simple cognitive skills, subjective observations, performance in controlled situations, performance of physical manipulation of an automobile or assessment determined by complex multilevel systems that are not reasonable accessible to all clinicians. These methods lack the ability to address four critical factors needed for accurate evaluation of cognitively impaired individuals; the need for ecologically valid tests, the need for objective measures of cognitive skills related to driving, the need for practical, user-friendly tools, and the need to incorporate theoretical rationale to the development of assessment tools. The Neurocognitive Driving Test (NDT) was created to address all four of these critical factors. Based on Michon's Hierarchical Model of Driving Tasks and through the use PoweLaboratory (Chute&Westfall, 1996), the computerised program allows assessment of driving related behaviours in ecologically valid tasks and situations. This first study of the NDT, seeks to validate the function of this newly created driving assessment program in predicting the rank order of driving ability generated by a hospital based evaluation, in fifteen brain-injured adults who were administered both the NDT and a hospital based driving evaluation. The results of a Spearman Rank Order Correlation reveal a significant correlation between the rank order of driving ability generated by the hospital-based assessment and the rank order of driving ability generated by the NDT, p = .743. The study also initiates examination into the individual variables generated by the NDT. Analyses identifying the most highly related variables to the rank order generated by the hospital evaluation and comparison of performance between normal and brain-injured subjects were completed to validate the current version of the NDT, and aid in the identification of cut-off values for differentiating between impaired and non-impaired drivers. (A)