Useful Field of View® (UFOV)

Visual processing and memory training from Posit Science incorporates UFOV, a visual training and assessment technology that has been investigated in dozens of published studies, many funded by the National Institutes of Health. Numerous clinical trials have demonstrated that UFOV not only improves cognitive abilities in adults, but also drives positive changes than can help people drive more safely, maintain their health status, and remain independent.

What is UFOV?
UFOV stands for "Useful Field of View". The useful field of view is the area over which a person can extract information in a single glance without moving his or her head or eyes. A normal range of useful field of view allows a driver to keep his or her eyes on the road and still notice hazards that may come at the car from the side, such as a child running into the street after a ball.

Studies have shown that the size of useful field of view plays a key role in a person's ability to drive, walk, and safely perform other tasks related to mobility. Individuals who experience reductions in their useful field of view are more likely to fall and more likely to be involved in traffic accidents. In fact, individuals with very poor useful field of view are six times more likely to be involved in a car crash than those in the normal range.

Many older adults experience reductions in their useful field of view that can limit their ability to drive safely and live independently. The UFOV training technology was created to exercise the areas of the brain involved in useful field of view and re-expand the size of the field, allowing older adults and other individuals with impairments to improve their field and assess their risk of being involved in a crash, fall, or other mobility-related accident.

How UFOV Was Developed
The concept of UFOV was developed by Dr. Karlene Ball—a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Director of UAB's Center for Research in Applied Gerontology—and a team of researchers at Visual Awareness Inc. In earlier scientific research, many older adults reported difficulty driving, walking, and other mobility-related activities that were not the result of any physical problem. The UFOV training and assessment program was scientifically designed to address the cognitive root of these difficulties: a decline in visual processing speed. After several years of systematic study and refinement, UFOV is now recognized as one of the best predictors of crash risk and real world driving performance, and the UFOV training and assessment technology continues to be researched in numerous studies.

UFOV and Posit Science programs
In early 2008, Posit Science partnered with the scientific team that developed UFOV, acquiring Visual Awareness Inc. and incorporating the UFOV technology into InSight, the Posit Science program for visual processing and memory. The UFOV technology is also incorporated into the DriveSharp program.