Relative weighting of visual and auditory cues in street-crossing decisions with age-related macular degeneration
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: We investigated street-crossing decisions in individuals with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) compared to a group with normal vision, using highly realistic visual and acoustic simulations of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian. Participants pressed a button at the last safe moment they could safely start crossing the street. The vehicle was presented visually, auditorily, or both concurrently. We present a novel analysis method for estimating the relative importance of visual and auditory cues for the crossing decision. In single-modality conditions, cue weights indicated that responses were associated not only with the vehicle's arrival time (i.e., gap duration), as it would be if decisions were based on an unbiased estimate of the arrival time, but also with the vehicle’s spatial distance, optical size, acoustic vehicle source intensity, and with time elapsed after the trial start. In the audiovisual condition, auditory and visual cues were associated with the responses. Results are largely compatible with cue weights in arrival time estimates made by the same participants, reported in a previous paper. The cue weights showed minor differences between the groups with AMD and normal vision. Analyses of the mean judged shortest safe gaps and their intraindividual variability showed effects of vehicle speed, source intensity, and size, compatible with the cue weights and TTC estimation results from our previous paper, but again with minor differences between the two groups. However, the proportion of safe crossing decisions was lower in the AMD group, due to a slower walking speed. Our study provides important insights into the decision-making in crossing decisions and shows that AMD had a surprisingly small effect on such decisions.
Language: English
Topic: Traffic and Road Safety
Subfield: Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7171389004