How does a lower predictability of lane changes affect performance in the Lane Change Task?

The Lane Change Task (LCT) is an established method to assess driver distraction caused by secondary tasks. In the LCT ISO standard, “course following and maneuvering” and “event detection” are mentioned as central task properties. Especially event detection seems to be a reasonable feature, as research suggests that distraction has profound effects on drivers' reactions to sudden, unexpected events. However, closer inspection of the LCT reveals that the events to be detected (lane change signs) and the required response are highly predictable. To investigate how the LCT's distraction assessment of secondary tasks might change if lane change events and responses were less predictable, we implemented three different versions of the LCT – an “original” one, a second one with lowered predictability of event position, and a third one with lowered predictability of event position and response. We tested each of these implementations with the same set of visual and cognitive secondary tasks of varying demand. The results showed that a decrease in predictability resulted in overall degraded performance in the LCT when using the basic lane change model for analysis. However, all secondary task conditions suffered equally. No differential effects were found. We conclude that although an ISO conforming implementation of the LCT might not be excessively valid regarding its depiction of safety relevant events, the results obtained are nevertheless comparable to what would be found in settings of higher validity.     

Combined effects of acoustic and visual distraction on cognitive performance and well-being

Information work is usually performed in offices and influenced by the combined effects of acoustics, room climate, lighting and air quality. However, the principal part of literature solely focuses on the individual effects of physical parameters. This study (n = 32) investigates the combined effects of acoustic and visual distraction with regard to cognitive performance and well-being. Therefore low level background speech (40 dB(A)) of good or poor intelligibility was combined with either static or dynamic lighting. Experimental testing lasted for approx. 7 h for each participant and was conducted in mock-up offices. No interaction effects of background speech and lighting conditions with regard to cognitive performance were found. However, the results prove that even low level background speech of high intelligibility significantly impairs short-term memory, reasoning ability and well-being. But no effect of background speech on text comprehension and sustained attention was found. Visual distraction due to dynamic lighting caused significant complaints but did not impair performance. An interaction effect of background speech and lighting conditions was found with regard to perceived performance during task processing. Test persons only felt to perform better, if background speech of low intelligibility was combined with static lighting. It is shown that the effects on cognitive performance and well-being must be considered separately since these effects are rarely consistent.     

The effect of auditory distraction on the useful field of view in hearing impaired individuals and its implications for driving

This study assessed whether the increased demand of listening in hearing impaired individuals exacerbates the detrimental impact of auditory distraction on a visual task (useful field of view test), relative to normally hearing listeners. Auditory distraction negatively affects this visual task, which is linked with various driving performance outcomes. Hearing impaired and normally hearing participants performed useful field of view testing with and without a simultaneous listening task. They also undertook a cognitive test battery. For all participants, performing the visual and auditory tasks together reduced performance on each respective test. For a number of subtests, hearing impaired participants showed poorer visual task performance, though not to a statistically significant extent. Hearing impaired participants were significantly poorer at a reading span task than normally hearing participants and tended to score lower on the most visually complex subtest of the visual task in the absence of auditory task engagement. Useful field of view performance is negatively affected by auditory distraction, and hearing loss may present further problems, given the reductions in visual and cognitive task performance suggested in this study. Suggestions are made for future work to extend this study, given the practical importance of the findings.     

Effects of voice technology on test track driving performance: implications for driver distraction

This work compares the degradation in driving performance associated with secondary tasks performed with voice-based and visual/manual interfaces, including radio tuning, phone dialing, and more complex tasks involving a sequence of interactions with an in-vehicle computer system. Twenty-one participants drove an instrumented vehicle while performing a combination of car-following, peripheral target detection, and secondary tasks on a closed test track. Drivers compensated for increased task demands associated with secondary tasks by increasing their following distance. Performing secondary tasks also resulted in significant decrements to vehicle control, target detection, and car-following performance. The voice-based interface helped reduce the distracting effects of secondary task performance. Modest improvements were observed for measures of vehicle control and target detection but not for car following. The results indicated that performing in-vehicle tasks required diversion of both peripheral (visual and manual) and attentional (cognitive) resources from driving. The voice-based interface reduced the peripheral impairment but did not appreciably reduce the attentional impairment. Actual or potential applications of this research include improvements to the design of invehicle information systems and the development of evaluation protocols to assess their distraction potential.     

Impacts of anger on driving performance: A comparison to texting and conversation while driving

Traditionally, driver distraction has been categorized into four types: visual, biomechanical, auditory, and cognitive. However, the place of emotion in driving research is largely undefined. The present study investigates the specific influences of anger – representative emotion arisen while driving, on driving performance, compared to those of traditional distraction tasks. In total, seventy-eight participants were recruited and placed into one of four driving conditions: physical (visual-biomechanical) distraction, cognitive (cognitive-auditory) distraction, emotional (anger), and control conditions. The results demonstrated that anger degrades driving performance as much as or more than other distraction types, specifically, in a yellow traffic signal situation. The causes for these results, underlying mechanisms, and other considerations are discussed with implications for future research.     

Unpacking the temporal advantage of distributing complex visual displays

Spatial arrangement of information can have large effects on problem solving. Although such effects have been observed in various domains (e.g., instruction and interface designs), little is known about the cognitive processing mechanisms underlying these effects, nor its applicability to complex visual problem solving. In three experiments, we showed that the impact of spatial arrangement of information on problem solving time can be surprisingly large for complex real world tasks. It was also found that the effect can be caused by large increases in slow, external information searches (Experiment 1), that the spatial arrangement itself is the critical factor and the effect is domain-general (Experiment 2a), and that the underlying mechanism can involve micro-strategy selection for information encoding in a response to differing information access cost (Experiment 2b). Overall, these studies show a large slowdown effect (i.e., approximately 30%) that stacking information produces over spatially distributed information, and multiple paths by which this effect can be produced.     

Inferring Cross-Sections: When Internal Visualizations Are More Important Than Properties of External Visualizations

Three experiments examined how cognitive abilities and qualities of external visualizations affected performance of a mental visualization task; inferring the cross-section of a complex three-dimensional object. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of animations designed to provide different task-relevant views of the external object. Experiment 2 examined the effects of both stereoscopic and motion-based depth cues. Experiment 3 examined the effects of interactive animations, with and without stereoscopic viewing conditions. In all experiments, spatial and general reasoning abilities were measured. Effects of animation, stereopsis, and interactivity were relatively small and did not reach statistical significance. In contrast, spatial ability was significantly associated with superior performance in all experiments, and this remained true after controlling for general intelligence. The results indicate that difficulties in this task stem more from the cognitive ability to perform the relevant internal spatial transformations, than limited visual information about the three-dimensional structure of the object.     

Countermeasures to prevent detection failure of a vehicle approaching on collision course

Objective

This study investigated causal factor of perceptual failure and possible countermeasure of crossing path crashes at clear-sighted unsignalised intersections.

Background

Crossing path crashes involving two vehicles at intersections are a common and serious problem, and perceptual failure has been identified as a predominant causal factor. Previous studies have showed that late detection of a crossing vehicle frequently occurs even when there are no visual obstructions, at such as rural intersections.

Method

With using a fixed-based driving simulator, three experiments were performed to investigate a driver’s ability to detect a periphery presented cross traffic while approaching an intersection. In Experiment 1, drivers’ ability to detect crossing vehicles in their peripheral field of view was studied, both in conditions of vehicles following a collision and a non-collision trajectory. In Experiment 2, we examined whether abrupt appearance of a vehicle on collision course would improve detection performance. In Experiment 3, we tested potential of collision warning, if it affects voluntary visual scanning, improving the detection performance regarding hazards cross traffic.

Results

The results of Experiment 1 showed that vehicles on collision course vehicles were detected late. This suggested that the late detection could be related to the lack of motion visible in the peripheral view. In Experiment 2, it was found that abrupt appearance effect (“pop-up” from road side occluding furniture) improves detection performance of a crossing vehicle. The results of Experiment 3 demonstrated that cross traffic collision warnings were beneficial for preventing late detection responses by means of encouraging voluntary visual scanning.

Conclusion

Less attention attractive visual properties of hazardous cross traffic attributed to mutual approaching course can cause recognition failure. Drivers’ gaze shift to potential conflicting direction, either reflective or voluntary manner, is crucially important for preventing crossing path crashes at such as rural intersections.     

Gaze behaviour, believability, likability and the iCat

The iCat is a user-interface robot with the ability to express a range of emotions through its facial features. This article summarizes our research to see whether we can increase the believability and likability of the iCat for its human partners through the application of gaze behaviour. Gaze behaviour serves several functions during social interaction such as mediating conversation flow, communicating emotional information and avoiding distraction by restricting visual input. There are several types of eye and head movements that are necessary for realizing these functions. We designed and evaluated a gaze behaviour system for the iCat robot that implements realistic models of the major types of eye and head movements found in living beings: vergence, vestibulo ocular reflexive, smooth pursuit movements and gaze shifts. We discuss how these models are integrated into the software environment of the iCat and can be used to create complex interaction scenarios. We report about some user tests and draw conclusions for future evaluation scenarios.     

Remote Conversations: The Effects of Mediating Talk With Technology

Three different videoconferencing systems for supporting multiparty, remote conversations are described and evaluated experimentally. The three systems differed by how many participants were visible at once, their spatial arrangement, and control over who was seen. Conversations using these systems were compared to same-room (Experiment 1) and audio-only (Experiment 2) conversations. Specialized speech-tracking equipment recorded the on-off patterns of speech that allowed objective measurement of structural aspects of the conversations, such as turn length, pauses, and interruptions. Questionnaires and interviews also documented participants' opinions and perceptions in the various settings. Contrary to expectation, systems in which visual cues such as selective gaze were absent produced no differences in turn-taking or in any other aspect of the structure of conversation. In fact, turn-taking was unaffected even when visual information was completely absent. Overall, only the same-room condition showed any significant differences from any other condition; people in the same room produced more interruptions and fewer formal handovers of the floor than in any of the technology-mediated conditions. In this respect, the audio-only and video systems examined in these studies were equivalent. However, analyses of participants' perceptions showed that participants felt that visual access in mediated conversations was both important and beneficial in conversation. Further, there were indications that the particular design of the different video systems did affect some aspects of conversational behavior, such as the ability to hold side and parallel conversations.     

Collaborater for a Car‐Like Vehicle Driven by a User with Visual Inattention

This paper proposes a control system applied to a car‐like vehicle driven by a user. The controller is designed to mitigate the negative effects produced by possible visual distractions of this user. In addition, the paper proposes to evaluate the user's visual distraction, defining a vector that has two components: one with respect to the path and the other with respect to the obstacles. These elements can be computed on‐line and are associated with two time delays that produce a similar effect of instability on the motion of the vehicle. The proposed scheme considers the distraction in the design through such delays. Finally, experiments using a car simulator are carried out     

Retention of trained performance in consistent mapping search after extended delay.

We examined the retention of performance in memory, visual, and hybrid memory/visual search after subjects received extensive consistent mapping (CM) practice. In the first two experiments we examined retention of detection performance in memory scanning (Experiment 1) and in visual search (Experiment 2) approximately one month after training. In the third experiment we examined performance 1, 30, 90, 180, and 365 days following training on pure visual and hybrid memory/visual semantic-category search tasks. We examined retention at intervals up to one year after practice as a function of amount of CM practice. In addition, we assessed the degree of category activation (performance on untrained words from the trained categories) at each retention interval. Across experiments, we found no decay in CM trained memory search and minimal decay in pure visual search. Significant decline in CM performance was largely attributable to performance in the hybrid memory/visual search conditions. These data reconcile previously equivocal retention results for CM trained search performance.     

On-line driver workload estimation. Effects of road situation and age on secondary task measures

In order to develop a driver-car interface that adapts the presentation of messages generated by in-vehicle information systems to driver workload, two experiments investigated potential determinants of driver visual and mental workload as indicated by performance on two secondary tasks. Experiment 1 suggested that road situation is a major determinant of visual and mental workload of the driver and that the processing resources of older drivers are somewhat more limited than those of younger and middle-aged drivers. Familiarity with the area of driving (when guided) and time of day (associated with traffic density) showed no secondary task effects. Experiment 2 showed that the categorization of road situations, proposed in Experiment 1, could underlie adaptation of visually loading messages to the workload incurred by driving. This was not found with respect to mentally loading messages.     

On-line driver workload estimation. Effects of road situation and age on secondary task measures

In order to develop a driver-car interface that adapts the presentation of messages generated by in-vehicle information systems to driver workload, two experiments investigated potential determinants of driver visual and mental workload as indicated by performance on two secondary tasks. Experiment 1 suggested that road situation is a major determinant of visual and mental workload of the driver and that the processing resources of older drivers are somewhat more limited than those of younger and middle-aged drivers. Familiarity with the area of driving (when guided) and time of day (associated with traffic density) showed no secondary task effects. Experiment 2 showed that the categorization of road situations, proposed in Experiment 1, could underlie adaptation of visually loading messages to the workload incurred by driving. This was not found with respect to mentally loading messages.     

Does modality play a role? Visual‐verbal cognitive style and multimedia learning

The study presented in this paper aimed to examine the effect of visual and verbal cognitive style on learning from different types of visualization and modalities of explanatory text. Learning materials in the form of either computer‐based animation or a series of static pictures with written or spoken explanations were presented to 197 students. We found that a more developed visual cognitive style was related to a better learning outcome, when learning from a combination of static pictures and written text. Higher developed visualizers achieved poorer learning outcomes when learning with an animation and written text. The results are partially in line with an ability‐as‐compensator effect and the expertise reversal effect. Additionally, we found a modality effect as the versions with spoken text provided better results on learning outcome than the versions with written text regardless of the prominence of visual cognitive style. No significant interaction effects were found regarding verbal cognitive style.     

Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers

Laptops are commonplace in university classrooms. In light of cognitive psychology theory on costs associated with multitasking, we examined the effects of in-class laptop use on student learning in a simulated classroom. We found that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not. The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.     

Stimulus size scaling and foveal load as determinants of peripheral target detection

This paper reports two experiments on the effect of scaling the size of stimuli (using factors derived from consideration of cortical magnification) on the detection of peripheral visual targets. In the first experiment two levels of magnification, fully M-scaled and half M-scaled, were used to scale stimuli that were presented briefly. The performance decrement normally associated with increasing retinal eccentricity did not occur with both levels of magnification. There was an unexpected decline in performance at low eccentricities and possible explanations are discussed. The second experiment investigated the effects of half M-scaling on a peripheral detection task with the addition of foveal cognitive loading as would be found in many practical tasks. Half M-scaling improved performance with and without the presence of foveal loading, and the improvement was greater for the foveal load condition when the target was at the larger eccentricities. These results provide a useful indication of the possibility of reducing the effect of tunnel vision for visual inspection tasks on visual displays or, possibly, control panels through the development of variable resolution projection displays matching the psychophysical properties of the human visual system.     

Occlusion as a measure for visual workload: an overview of TNO occlusion research in car driving

A process-oriented approach by systematically studying driver performance, distraction, and workload is the way to go for assessing safety effects of new telematics applications in vehicles. These systems may strive for drivers' attention and possibly lead to distraction from the primary task. Visual occlusion techniques appear to be an effective means of studying drivers' visual information processing performance. Studies to illustrate this include identifying the minimum visual information drivers need for driving (asking for visual information) and the evaluation of driver support systems such as heading control and adaptive cruise control with respect to visual workload. In other applications the occlusion technique is used to exclude 'visual array' information from the optic flow field. The temporary exclusion of part of the visual field of view was applied in evaluating the effects of different types of driver's side rearview mirrors.     

Visual attention in driving: the effects of cognitive load and visual disruption

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates the effect of cognitive load on guidance of visual attention. BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that cognitive load can undermine driving performance, particularly drivers' ability to detect safety-critical events. Cognitive load combined with the loss of exogenous cues, which can occur when the driver briefly glances away from the roadway, may be particularly detrimental. METHOD: In each of two experiments, twelve participants engaged in an auditory task while performing a change detection task. A change blindness paradigm was implemented to mask exogenous cues by periodically blanking the screen in a driving simulator while a change occurred. Performance measures included participants' sensitivity to vehicle changes and confidence in detecting them. RESULTS: Cognitive load uniformly diminished participants' sensitivity and confidence, independent of safety relevance or lack of exogenous cues. Periodic blanking, which simulated glances away from the road-way, undermined change detection to a greater degree than did cognitive load; however, drivers' confidence in their ability to detect changes was diminished more by cognitive load than by periodic blanking. CONCLUSION: Cognitive load and short glances away from the road are additive in their tendency to increase the likelihood of drivers missing safety-critical events. APPLICATION: This study demonstrates the need to consider the combined consequence of cognitive load and brief glances away from the road in the design of emerging in-vehicle devices and the need to provide drivers with better feedback regarding these consequences.     

Evaluating a synthetic talking head using a dual task: Modality effects on speech understanding and cognitive load

The dual task is a data-rich paradigm for evaluating speech modes of a synthetic talking head. Three experiments manipulated auditory–visual (AV) and auditory-only (A-only) speech produced by text-to-speech synthesis from a talking head (Experiment 1—single task; Experiment 2—dual task), and natural speech produced by a human male similar in appearance to the talking head (Experiment 3—dual task). In a dual task, participants perform two tasks concurrently with a secondary reaction time (RT) task sensitive to cognitive processing demands of the primary task. In the primary task, participants either shadowed words or named the superordinate categories to which words belonged under AV (dynamic face with lips moving) or A-only (static face) speech modes. First, it was hypothesized that category naming is more difficult than shadowing. The hypothesis was supported in each experiment with significantly longer latencies on the primary task and slower RT on the secondary task. Second, an AV advantage was hypothesized and supported by significantly shorter latencies for the AV modality on the primary task of Experiment 3 and with partial support in Experiment 1. Third, it was hypothesized that while the AV modality helps it also creates great cognitive load. Significantly longer RT for AV presentation in the secondary tasks supported this hypothesis. The results indicate that task difficulty influences speech perception. Performance on a secondary task can reveal cognitive demand that is not evident in a single task or self-report ratings. A dual task will be an effective evaluation tool in operational environments where multiple tasks are conducted (e.g., responding to spoken directions and monitoring displays) and an implicit, sensitive measure of cognitive load is imperative.