Karlene-Ball

Allstate: Can we improve Driver Safety using Posit Science InSight?

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Insur­ance com­pa­ny All­state and brain fit­ness soft­ware devel­op­er Posit Sci­ence just announced (see press release Pro­tect­ing Penn­syl­va­nia Dri­vers, One Brain at a Time) a very intel­li­gent initiative:

Video exer­cis­es aid dri­ving skills (Chica­go Tribune)

-“All­state, which called the Posit pro­gram “poten­tial­ly the next big break­through in auto­mo­bile safe­ty,” said it expects its soft­ware exer­cis­es to reduce risky dri­ving maneu­vers by up to 40 per­cent and improve stop­ping dis­tance by an aver­age of 22 feet when trav­el­ing at 55 miles per hour.”

-“We’ll look to see whether over the next six to nine months there will be a reduc­tion in” the num­ber of acci­dents between the group par­tic­i­pat­ing in the video exer­cis­es and those sit­ting out, said Tom War­den, assis­tant vice pres­i­dent of All­state’s research and plan­ning center.

Tom Warden Allstate

I am for­tu­nate to inter­view Tom War­den, Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent and Leader of Allstate’s Research and Plan­ning Cen­ter, based in Men­lo Park, California.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Tom, thank you for your time. Can you please explain the con­text behind this new ini­tia­tive that you just announced?

Tom War­den: Our research cen­ter is con­stant­ly look­ing for new ideas to improve the dri­ving behav­ior of dri­vers of all ages. Recent­ly we have paid extra empha­sis on ways to improve the safe­ty of old­er drivers.

Let me pro­vide some back­ground here. All­state, as a com­pa­ny, has always been one of the pio­neers in help­ing to intro­duce new safe­ty mea­sures. For exam­ple, we were among the pio­neers in the 60s to advo­cate for manda­to­ry use of seat­ing belts, giv­en research stud­ies on the ben­e­fits for dri­vers and pas­sen­gers alike. More recent­ly, we helped lob­by for wider adop­tion of airbags, an effec­tive but expen­sive way of pro­tec­tion that only became main­stream when man­u­fac­tur­ers were required to include them.

Let’s talk now about your agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence. What will hap­pen over the next months?

The first thing we are doing is to con­duct a research study to ana­lyze the real-life impact of Posit Sci­ence InSight, a com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, on acci­dent rates. We know that as dri­vers get old­er [Read more…] about All­state: Can we improve Dri­ver Safe­ty using Posit Sci­ence InSight?

DriveFit (CogniFit); Brain Fitness Program for Driving

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Dri­ving as Next Brain Fit­ness Application? 

Last month, at the MIT/ Smart­Sil­vers event where we pre­sent­ed our Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report, we dis­cussed what spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions, beyond the cur­rent empha­sis on healthy Two In One Taskaging, might take com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing to a new level.  

Assess­ing and improv­ing dri­ving skills would be a top can­di­date, giv­en both the well-defined nature of the need and the appear­ance of pro­grams with grow­ing evi­dence (both sci­en­tif­ic and real-world) behind.

The New York Times Asks… 

Along these lines, the New York Times just published this arti­cle: Are You a Good Dri­ver? Here’s How to Find Out. A few quotes:

- “COULD a video game make you a bet­ter dri­ver? More impor­tant, could com­put­er soft­ware pre­vent teenagers from mak­ing fatal mis­takes or even weed out old­er dri­vers whose debil­i­ties make them crash-prone?”

[Read more…] about Dri­ve­Fit (Cog­niFit); Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Driving

Improving Driving Skills and Brain Functioning- Interview with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards

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Jerri Edwards- Active trialToday we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Jer­ri Edwards, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da’s School of Aging Stud­ies and Co-Inves­ti­ga­tor of the influ­en­cial ACTIVE study. Dr. Edwards was trained by Dr. Kar­lene K. Ball, and her research is aimed toward dis­cov­er­ing how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be main­tained and even enhanced with advanc­ing age.

Main focus of research

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Please explain to our read­ers your main research areas 

Jer­ri Edwards: I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may help old­er adults to avoid or at least delay func­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties and there­by main­tain their inde­pen­dence longer. Much of my work has focused on the func­tion­al abil­i­ty of dri­ving includ­ing assess­ing dri­ving fit­ness among old­er adults and reme­di­a­tion of cog­ni­tive decline that results in dri­ving difficulties.

Some research ques­tions that inter­est me include, how can we main­tain health­i­er lives longer? How can train­ing improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, both to improve those abil­i­ties and also to slow-down, or delay, cog­ni­tive decline? The spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty that I have stud­ied the most is pro­cess­ing speed, which is one of the cog­ni­tive skills that decline ear­ly on as we age.

ACTIVE results

Can you explain what cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing speed is, and why it is rel­e­vant to our dai­ly lives? 

Pro­cess­ing speed is men­tal quick­ness. Just like a com­put­er with a 486 proces­sor can do a lot of the same things as a com­put­er with a Pen­tium 4 proces­sor, but it takes much longer, our minds tend to slow down with age as com­pared to when we were younger. We can do the same tasks, but it takes more time. Quick speed of pro­cess­ing is impor­tant for [Read more…] about Improv­ing Dri­ving Skills and Brain Func­tion­ing- Inter­view with ACTIVE’s Jer­ri Edwards

Customer Satisfaction Survey/ Tech Museum Awards

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We usu­al­ly spend more time in this blog talk­ing about brain fit­ness sci­ence, pro­grams and trends than talk­ing about peo­ple. Today we are going to change that, since we have been receiv­ing great feed­back from a num­ber of sources. While we still need to improve a lot, we can start to see the results of what we do in our “brain fit­ness cen­ter”. And we could­n’t be hap­pi­er about the nom­i­na­tion this week of Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and myself, as Sharp­Brains cofounders, for The Tech Muse­um Awards — Tech­nol­o­gy Ben­e­fit­ing Human­i­ty, in the Health category.

I. Anony­mous Feed­back from an online sur­vey of our online store cus­tomers

  • 58% respon­dents are Very Sat­is­fied, and 42% Sat­is­fied, with the prod­ucts and ser­vices they chose. I promise that there were more options (Dis­sat­is­fied, Very Dissatisfied)
  • “As a trad­er, I real­ly need to sus­tain atten­tion for long peri­ods. Your pro­gram (here) has been eye-open­ing and very helpful.”
  • “I LOVE the pro­gram! It is fun, chal­lenges me and gives me hope for improv­ing in the areas where I have lim­i­ta­tions. Staff sup­port & edu­ca­tion­al infor­ma­tion has been great. It is very impor­tant to be able to talk to some­one about the ques­tions or process prob­lems that we experience…your mem­ber on-line site gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get answers & need­ed sup­port. Thanks for all you are doing. My hus­band and I love get­ting feed­back about our progress…it is a very pos­i­tive experience!”
  • “Keep devel­op­ing pro­grams so when we fin­ish doing the Mind­Fit (here) pro­gram there will be anoth­er one to build upon the first! I am impressed at how well your pro­grams are indi­vid­u­al­ized. Good Job to all involved!”
  • “Good, I enjoy the games (here) and I can tell a dif­fer­ence in my mem­o­ry and over­all awareness.”

II. Feed­back about our Stress Man­age­ment for Peak Per­for­mance work­shop (here)