Three experiments including reaction time (RT) tasks and driving tasks were conducted to identify variables that may be sensitive to the effects of brain damage or aging and to determine how RT tasks relate to driving performance. In Experiment 1 mean RTs of the brain-damaged and older subjects disproportionately increased relative to those of controls, with increasing difference between subsequent compound stimuli. In Experiment 2 response accuracy of brain-damaged subjects deteriorated more than that of controls when the similarity of a task to actual driving increased. In Experiment 3 brain-damaged patients were slower and less accurate than the controls on all measures of a platoon car-following task, whereas the older subjects were only less accurate. Compared with those of the controls, brake RTs of neither the older subjects nor the patients were disproportionately affected by increasing task load. Performance on the platoon driving task could be successfully predicted by a laboratory RT task on time estimation only for the brain-damaged subjects.
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