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ATAVT: one second of a road

A traffic scene appears for about a second and is gone. Then you say what was in it. The test is not about memory and it is definitely not about detail.

gold Stage 2 7 min read

After each scene you are given a short list of categories — motor vehicles, pedestrians, road signs, traffic lights, two-wheeled vehicles and so on — and you indicate which were present. The "A" in the name is the important letter: the test is adaptive, so it adjusts to how well you are doing.

Exposure: About a second a scene
Response: Which categories of object were present
Adaptive: It gets harder while you are succeeding
Measuring: Speed of visual overview — how much of a scene you take in at once

Overview, not inspection

The ability being measured has a specific name in the literature: gaining an overview. Given a complex visual scene and very little time, how much structure do you extract? A driver approaching a station on a wet evening does not inspect the scene; they take it in, and the important things announce themselves.