The influence of demographic factors, processing speed and short-term memory on Iranian children's pedestrian skills

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Abstract

Objectives

Young children, children from lower socioeconomic status and boys have the highest risk of pedestrian injury. This study examined the relationship between cognition and specific pedestrian skills of these groups of children in Iran.

Methods

180 Iranian children aged 7 and 11 years from lower- and higher-socioeconomic status backgrounds participated in the study. A task to identify safe and dangerous road crossing sites and to plan a safe route to cross a road was administered to measure pedestrian skills. Coding and Digit Span subscales of WISC-R were administered to assess processing speed and short-term memory.

Results

Identifying safe/dangerous road crossing-sites and safe route-construction abilities increased with age. Boys scored higher than girls when identifying road crossing sites but did not differ to girls in route-construction. Lower socioeconomic status children scored higher than higher socioeconomic status children on the route-construction task. Girls from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds scored lowest on the identifying safe/dangerous sites task and girls from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds scored lowest on the route construction task. Speed of processing was a significant predictor for identifying crossing sites and socioeconomic status was a significant predictor for route-construction.

Conclusions

Pedestrian skills are complex and influenced by age, gender, socioeconomic status and cognitive development. Results are discussed in relation to child pedestrian safety research in Iran and road safety education for children.

Highlights

► We examined effects of demographic factors on Iranian children's pedestrian skills. ► We examined the role of cognition in the pedestrian skills of Iranian children. ► Age, gender and socioeconomic status influenced the pedestrian skills of children. ► Cognition was related to the ability to identify road crossing sites. ► Socioeconomic status was related to the ability to plan a safe route to cross roads.

Introduction

Road traffic injuries (RTI) comprise almost 30% of all injury deaths amongst children globally (World Health Organization, 2009). The types of road traffic injuries that affect children are predominantly pedestrian injuries and disproportionately higher injury rates are found for boys and for children from low income households (Backett and Johnston, 1997, WHO, 2008). The majority of research studies on factors associated with children's road traffic injuries have been carried out in high income countries. There is a scarcity of research on child road users in low to middle income countries where the majority of the world's children live.

In Iran, road traffic poses a significant threat to health (Karbakhsh et al., 2008, Rezapur-Shahkolai et al., 2009). The rate of RTI in Iran is very much higher than the worldwide rate reported by WHO (2009), particularly for children (Global, 2010, Naghavi et al., 2009). In the city of Tehran, Roudsari et al. (2006) found that RTI comprised 50% of all unintentional fatal injuries for children aged less than 15 years. This is considerably higher than the global rate of 30% reported by the WHO (2008). Boys were reported to have higher rates of deaths and injuries than girls, up to 2.2 times as many (Karbakhsh et al., 2008, Rezapur-Shahkolai et al., 2009, Zargar et al., 2003). The majority of child RTIs were pedestrians (Karbakhsh et al., 2008, Roudsari et al., 2006). When compared to global trends, similar demographic factors affect Iranian children's RTI statistics but the rates appear to be higher. Research on child pedestrian experiences and capabilities in Iran is scarce and there are several gaps in information needed to aid the development of prevention programmes (Tabibi et al., 2010).

Children in Iran face a dangerous traffic environment. Road traffic is dense in urban areas and pedestrian crossing facilities are scarce. The few pedestrian crossing facilities that exist are used infrequently and inappropriately. Consequently most Iranian parents who can afford it send their children to school by school bus services or by family car. In Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran, Shafabakhsh et al. (2008) found that only half of school aged children walk or cycle to and from school. However, a considerable number of children play on the streets because most live in flats or houses without gardens or in areas without playgrounds/playing fields (Soori, 2006). So streets are the most available place for children to play, particularly children in low income areas.

Research has consistently shown that children living in low-income areas have higher pedestrian injury rates and are more at risk for pedestrian injuries than children living in more economically advantaged areas (Collins and Kearns, 2005, Hasselberg et al., 2001, Reimers and Laflamme, 2005). Although reasons for such discrepancies have mainly been related to environmental differences (e.g., traffic density, lack of safe play areas, etc.), it is unclear whether educational and behavioural factors related to socioeconomic status might also be important (White et al., 1999). Also, there is a lack of information about social factors relevant to child pedestrian injury risk in Iran. One of the few studies to consider socioeconomic factors in relation to children's RTI in Iran compared RT injured children aged 6–9 years with a matched control group (Hadadi et al., 2007). The study found that RT injured children had mothers with lower levels of education than the matched control group. They also found that RT injured children and the matched controls differed with respect to parental supervision. Injured children's parents allowed their children to play outdoors and walk to school unsupervised more frequently than parents of the control group.

Although data on the rates of child road traffic injury is continuing to be accumulated, human factors that contribute to children's disproportionate pedestrian injury risk are still not thoroughly understood. Pedestrians require a range of fundamental road skills in order to interact safely with traffic. Comprehensive lists of the components of the cognitive skills required to cross a road safely have been provided by previous authors (e.g., Barton and Schwebel, 2007a, Thomson and Whelan, 1997). Foremost amongst these is the ability to perceive danger when crossing or deciding to cross roads. Age trends in the ability to identify safe and dangerous road crossing sites and to select a safe route to get to a given destination have been studied in a range of countries, including Scotland (Ampofo-Boateng and Thomson, 1991), England (Pfeffer, 2005, Tabibi and Pfeffer, 2003, Tabibi and Pfeffer, 2007), Norway (Fyhri et al., 2004), USA (Barton and Schwebel, 2007a) and Iran (Tabibi, 2010). The consistent results are that young children up to age 10 years fail to anticipate potential danger inherent in different crossing sites in order to take appropriate actions. No differences in road hazard perception have been found between boys and girls, despite the high representation of boys in injury statistics (Granié, 2007).

Several researchers have concluded that the perception of road danger depends on cognitive development and that this may impose limitations to what children can actually do when negotiating traffic environments. From an information processing approach for development the role of inhibition skills, attention switching skills, concentration, cognitive efficiency, visual search strategies, short-term memory and information processing speed have all been noted (Barton and Morrongiello, 2011, Dunbar et al., 2001, Schwebel et al., 2011, Tabibi and Pfeffer, 2003, Tabibi and Pfeffer, 2007, Vinje, 1981, Whitebread and Neilson, 2000). However, few studies have examined the interaction of several factors concurrently (Barton and Schwebel, 2007a, Barton and Schwebel, 2007b, Morrongiello and Schwebel, 2008, Barton et al., 2011).

The present paper investigates the role of processing speed and short-term memory on children's pedestrian skills. Developmental studies have indicated that children's information processing speed and retention of information in working memory both increase as children develop and that these changes underlie changes in reasoning and problem solving (Fry and Hale, 2000, Kail, 2007). Amongst cognitive developmental theories Case's theory considers both developmental and individual differences in cognition and argues that development comes about as the result of maturational factors and experience. Case attributes developmental differences to processing efficiency (Case, 1985, Case, 1987, Case, 1993, Case et al., 1996, Morra et al., 2009). According to Case, the amount of mental effort needed to execute a cognitive process decreases with age. Two spaces independently contribute to mental effort; storage space and operating space. Storage space is the capacity available for storing information in short-term memory. Operating space is the capacity that can be allocated to the execution of intellectual operations. It is reflected by the time taken to execute a cognitive skill (speed of processing). Faster processing allows for more information to be taken in. With maturation and experience, the amount of operating space required for executing a cognitive process declines and thus efficiency increases. According to Case, the rate at which processing efficiency increases differs amongst individuals. He attributed this individual difference to either biological or cultural–experiential factors (Case, 1985, Case, 1987, Case, 1993). Applying this to pedestrian skills, Case’ theory would predict that pedestrian skills will improve with increased processing speed and increased short-term memory.

The current study therefore aimed to examine road safety awareness of a sample of Iranian children. This will add to the scant research literature on child road users in Iran and children in low to middle income countries generally. Also, the study aimed to examine the effects of demographic variables (age, gender and socioeconomic status) on Iranian children's pedestrian skills. Finally the relationship between specific pedestrian skills and measures of cognition (processing speed and short-term memory capacity, as measured by the WISC) was investigated.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 180 pupils including 89 Year 2 (mean age = 7.5 years, SD = 0.5, age range 6.8 to 8.9 years) and 91 Year 5 children (mean age = 11.5 years, SD = 0.5, age range 10.9 to 12.9) participated in the study. Pupils were recruited from four schools, two (lower socioeconomic status) situated within a socially lower income area in the city of Mashhad, in the north east of Iran, and the other two (higher socioeconomic status) within socially middle to higher income areas of the city. The distinction between

Results

The effects of demographic variables (age group, gender and socioeconomic status) on each pedestrian task were analysed separately. Also, multiple regression was used to analyse the pedestrian task results with the cognitive tests (Digit Span, Coding) and age, gender and socioeconomic status as the predictor variables.

Discussion

Children's scores on the two pedestrian tasks used in this study were low. The overall mean score for perception of safe and dangerous road crossing sites was only 12.43 from a maximum possible score of 20. Also, for the pedestrian route construction task, overall scores were low with an overall mean score of 11.91 out of a maximum possible score of 20. The mean scores for the older children were considerably lower than Iranian adult scores from previous studies (Tabibi, 2010). More detailed

Conclusions

Age, gender and socioeconomic status affected Iranian children's responses to the pedestrian skills tests used. As expected, young children's performance was poor in both pedestrian tasks. The performance of girls from lower socioeconomic status schools was poor in identifying safe and dangerous crossing sites. Children from lower socioeconomic status schools performed relatively well in the route taking task. Also, cognitive tests measuring speed of processing were related to some aspects of

Acknowledgments

This research was approved and supported by Research Committee of the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Contract No: 3307, Date: 1387/8/12.

We would like to thank all children, teachers, headmasters of the schools who kindly accepted and participated in our study. We also thank the education authorities of Khorasan Razavi (especially Mr. Hozhabri) for giving permission to run the study and Reyhana Hosseini Zory for collecting data.

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