There are a lot of cognitive abilities involved in driving, such as visual abilities, divided attention ability, speed estimated ability. They are influenced by the aging, alcohol, and traumatic brain injury. The present study assessed the effect of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on driving related cognitive abilities. 15 earthquake-related teenager PTSD patients were tested using the visual search test, attention span test, spatial working memory span test, divided attention test and speed estimated test. Their performance was compared with 15 normal teenagers survived from earthquake without PTSD. The results showed that the PTSD had significantly impaired patients’ spatial working memory span, but they were significantly better than the normal in the divided attention task. These results provided not only the references for deciding whether the PTSD patients fit to driving, but also the behavioral data for the PTSD-related brain mechanism study in the future.
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