Pilot Feasibility Study Examining Pupillary Response During Driving Simulation as a Measure of Cognitive Load in Breast Cancer Survivors.
Jamie S Myers, Nesreen Alissa, Melissa Mitchell and 8 others
PMID 32078618WHAT IT FOUND
Pupil response did not differ between breast cancer survivors and controls during driving simulation, even with added cognitive load, though the simulation was feasible and caused no simulator sickness.
Key findings
01The driving simulation was feasible: 38 participants consented, no simulator sickness symptoms warranted stopping, and only two participants were excluded from analyses for any performance variable.
02Pupil response did not differ between breast cancer survivors and healthy controls during either driving simulation, with or without the added n-back task.
03Breast cancer survivors showed within-group pupil response reductions when driving with the n-back task, and two between-group change-score differences favoured survivors for lane position, but no correction for multiple tests was used.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was a small substudy of a pilot, so it cannot establish that pupil response measures cognitive load. No correction for multiple tests was used, so exploratory differences may be chance findings. The driving scenarios may have been too simple for breast cancer survivors, because performance improved in the second simulation. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that cancer treatment caused the driving or pupil-response differences. Two participants were excluded from analyses for some performance variables, and missing pupil data occurred because of blinks, eye movements, and head position.
Declared interests
The article is marked as supported by NIH extramural research funding. The supplied text does not include a separate conflict-of-interest statement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat pupil response during driving simulation as a validated measure of cognitive load in breast cancer survivors. The pilot found no between-group pupil response differences, even when a second task was added, and it used a small sample with no correction for multiple tests.