A Link Between Trust in Technology and Glance Allocation in On-Road Driving

This paper examines whether there is an association between preexposure trust in technology and subsequent glance behavior when interacting with a technology that was relatively novel for the majority of participants. After rating their level of trust in technology on a questionnaire, participants drove one of two vehicle models on a highway and engaged in a voice-based navigation address entry task. Subjective ratings of trust in new car technologies were found to be significantly positively correlated with a higher frequency of glances across all coded glance regions during the task. In one of the voice-interface implementations, these higher ratings of trust were also associated with a higher frequency of glances to the user interface, but with fewer long duration (>2s) glances per minute. A lower trust in technology in general showed some association with taking more time to complete interactions. The findings are discussed as highlighting the potential value of further research into the associations between trust and visual scanning behavior.