The technology for communicating traffic information to pedestrians via mobile devices is on the horizon. Research on how such information influences all aspects of pedestrian behavior is critical to developing effective solutions.

This study investigated how people coordinate their decisions and actions with a risky or safe computer-generated agent in a humanoid or non-humanoid form and how this experience influences later behavior when acting alone. In Experiment 1, participants first repeatedly crossed continuous traffic in a virtual environment with a humanoid computer-generated agent (Figure 1). Participants were specifically instructed to cross with an agent that was programmed to be either safe (taking only large gaps) or risky (also taking relatively small gaps). Participants then repeatedly crossed the same roadway alone. We found that participants’ experiences with crossing safe vs. risky gaps with an agent persisted in later trials when the participants crossed alone, such that participants accepted tighter gaps if they were previously paired with a risky than a safe agent.  In Experiment 2 (Figure 2), we tested whether experience crossing with a risky or safe non-humanoid object (a floating box) also influenced later behavior when crossing alone. We again found that participants who crossed with the risky object partner took tighter gaps when later crossing alone than those who crossed with the safe object partner. The Discussion focuses on the impact of experiences with virtual agents on perception–action tuning and the potential of using virtual agents for training safe road-crossing behavior.

Objective This study examined how parents and children interact when crossing virtual roads together. We examined (1) whether children’s inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality and children’s failure to jointly perform the task interfered with parents’ efforts to scaffold children’s road-crossing skill and (2) whether experience with the joint road-crossing task impacted children’s subsequent performance in a solo road-crossing task. Methods Fifty-five 8- to 10-year-old children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and their parents first jointly crossed a lane of traffic in an immersive pedestrian simulator. Children then completed the same road-crossing task alone. Parents completed questionnaires about children’s symptoms of inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality. Results Analyses of the joint road-crossing task showed that when parents and children crossed different gaps, parents suggested and opposed more gaps and were less likely to use a prospective gap communication strategy (i.e., communicating about a crossable gap prior to its arrival). Crossing different gaps was also associated with increased expressions of negative affect among parents and children and an increase in collisions among children. Children’s level of parent-reported oppositionality also predicted an increase in child defiance and parental redirection of child behavior. Analyses of children’s subsequent crossing performance indicated that parents’ use of a prospective gap communication strategy during the joint road-crossing task predicted selection of larger gaps during the solo crossing task. Conclusions Not crossing through the same gap and increased levels of child oppositionality interfered with the scaffolding process, potentially informing future parent-based intervention efforts for increasing children’s road-crossing safety.

This investigation examined parental scaffolding of children's prospective control over decisions and actions during a joint perception-action task. Parents and their 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children (N = 128) repeatedly crossed a virtual roadway together. Guidance and control shifted from the parent to the child with increases in child age. Parents more often chose the gap that was crossed and prospectively communicated the gap choice with younger than older children. Greater use of an anticipatory gap selection strategy by parents predicted more precise timing of entry into the gap by children. This work suggests that social interaction may serve as an important experiential mechanism for the development of prospective control over decisions and actions in the perception-action domain.