The thesis concerns the large number of children who become the victim of traffic accidents every year. A large-scale research programme was undertaken at the traffic research centre of the university of Groningen in order to obtain more information regarding the possibilities of traffic training for young children. Adequate traffic education requires an optimal linkage between the behaviour to be learned and the actual capacities of the children concerned. This thesis describes research on these capacities of children for safe participation as a pedestrian in traffic. Earlier research showed the existence of several deficiencies in the ability of young children to carry out various parts of the pedestrian task. However, accident studies as well as behavioural observations have shown that the primary problems concern the child's attention for the traffic task. A less than optimal allocation of attention to the pedestrian task seems to be the main impediment to the occurrence of safe traffic behaviour in children. Therefore, it was decided to place this study in the context of the development of children. Chapter i describes the context of the research and the problem that led to it. Chapter ii is a review of the literature on the development of attention in children. In chapter iii two laboratory experiments are described. Chapter iv contains three experiments on the distractability of children in traffic and the factors involved in it. Chapter v presents the allocation of attention in search processes. In chapter vi the selection of information on which children base their crossing decisions after having detected the presence of oncoming traffic is considered. In chapter vii more general points are discussed, among them the implications of the findings for the traffic capacities of young children and the striking differences between the performance in various instances of the pedestrian task by boys and girls.
Abstract