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Impact of Relevance and Distraction on Driving Performance and Visual Attention in a Simulated Driving Environment
Author(s) -
Garrison Teena M.,
Williams Carrick C.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.2917
Subject(s) - distraction , signage , driving simulator , relevance (law) , psychology , poison control , phone , cognitive psychology , human factors and ergonomics , contrast (vision) , eye tracking , applied psychology , simulation , computer science , advertising , computer vision , medical emergency , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , political science , law , business
Summary Previous demonstrations of the impact of cellular phone conversations on visual attention when driving have primarily focused on attention to stimuli that are not relevant to driving. In contrast, we used a driving simulator and eye tracking to examine attention allocation across driving‐relevant and driving‐irrelevant items in the environment depending on whether drivers were distracted. Performance measures indicated that distraction negatively impacted vehicle control. However, driving relevance and the presence of distraction did not interact, suggesting that participants responded to potential hazards similarly in driving‐only and distraction conditions. In contrast, eye movement results indicated an interaction between distraction and relevance. Drivers attended more to driving‐relevant objects, and these objects showed smaller decrements in number of gazes in the distraction condition, compared with less relevant items. Even under distraction conditions, experienced drivers continued to attend to potential hazards, allocating less attention to billboards and roadway signage. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.