Transfer Effectiveness of a Driving Simulator

Forty student drivers received various amounts of driving simulator and film-only pretraining to determine the transfer effectiveness of open-loop simulation using passive instructors in a driver education program. To measure the effects of previous driving experience, the simulator performance of eight licensed drivers was compared to the student drivers. Early in simulation, licensed drivers exhibited reliably better steering performance than the 6-hr. simulation pretraining students, but the reverse was true late in simulation. Six hr. of pretraining yielded significantly better transfer in terms of overall automobile driving performance on a McGlade Road Test than 3 hr. of pretraining regardless of whether the pretraining included instructional films alone or films used in conjunction with simulators. A component analysis of the first hour of driving performance revealed that the 6-hr. pretraining groups were superior to the 3-hr. group on a procedures dimension. In addition, the film-only pretraining groups were superior to the simulator groups in terms of a steering dimension during the first hour of transfer. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of improving simulators used in driver education.