Children’s gaze behaviour at real-world and simulated road crossings

Children and older adults are overrepresented in pedestrian accidents (Department for Transport, 2010a, 2010b). Gaze behaviour is cited as a contributing factor in the majority of such accidents (Department for Transport, 2010a, 2010b); however, remarkably little is known about how children, adults and older adults control their gaze during either real or simulated road-crossing tasks. Because evidence suggests that behaviour in the laboratory may not accurately reflect that in more realistic situations (Dicks et al., 2010; ‘t Hart et al., 2009), this thesis used a real-world, active road-crossing task to compare, for the first time, how pedestrians across the lifespan direct their gaze during real road…