Inattentional Blindness in a Simulated Driving Task

This study was a subset of a larger investigation on the role of task load on IB occurrences in the context of driving. The focus of this study was the relationship between mental demand and inattentional blindness (IB) occurrences for a critical stimulus that is directly relevant to primary task performance. Forty-four undergraduates followed a series of auditory directives in a simulated driving environment to reach a destination. The final directive instructed participants to turn left at an intersection clearly marked with a “no left turn” sign. Of the total number of participants in this study, 79.5% (35 of 44) failed to detect the “no-left turn” road sign critical stimulus. Results revealed that individuals who detected the “no left turn” sign had significantly higher scores on the mental demand component of the NASA-TLX compared to those who failed to detect the sign. The negative relationship between IB occurrences and the subjective mental demand ratings suggest another factor, such as task engagement, may also impact IB occurrences.

[1]  Robert S. Astur,et al.  Feature-based attentional set as a cause of traffic accidents , 2007 .

[2]  Michael S. Ambinder,et al.  Change blindness , 1997, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[3]  S. Hart,et al.  Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load Index): Results of Empirical and Theoretical Research , 1988 .

[4]  Dot Hs,et al.  National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey , 2008 .

[5]  I. Hyman,et al.  Did you see the unicycling clown? Inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone , 2009 .

[6]  Thomas A. Dingus,et al.  The Impact of Driver Inattention on Near-Crash/Crash Risk: An Analysis Using the 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study Data , 2006 .

[7]  Daniel J. Simons,et al.  Inattentional blindness , 2007, Scholarpedia.

[8]  P. Bressan,et al.  Auditory Attention Causes Visual Inattentional Blindness , 2008, Perception.

[9]  Susana Rubio,et al.  Evaluation of Subjective Mental Workload: A Comparison of SWAT, NASA‐TLX, and Workload Profile Methods , 2004 .

[10]  D. Simons.  Attentional capture and inattentional blindness , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[11]  Nilli Lavie,et al.  The role of perceptual load in inattentional blindness , 2007, Cognition.

[12]  D. Strayer,et al.  Cell-Phone–Induced Driver Distraction , 2007 .

[13]  Linda Angell,et al.  The Distracted Driver: Mechanisms, Models, and Measurement , 2011 .

[14]  U. Neisser,et al.  Selective looking: Attending to visually specified events , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[15]  Timothy L. Brown,et al.  Speech-Based Interaction with In-Vehicle Computers: The Effect of Speech-Based E-Mail on Drivers' Attention to the Roadway , 2001, Hum. Factors.

[16]  法律.  Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices , 2010 .

[17]  Daniel Memmert,et al.  The effects of eye movements, age, and expertise on inattentional blindness , 2006, Consciousness and Cognition.

[18]  B. Tabachnick,et al.  Using Multivariate Statistics (5th Edition) , 2006 .

[19]  G A Peters,et al.  The distracted driver , 2001, The journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health.

[20]  Bruce N. Walker,et al.  Auditory Displays for In-Vehicle Technologies: , 2011 .

[21]  Steven B. Most,et al.  What you see is what you set: sustained inattentional blindness and the capture of awareness. , 2005, Psychological review.

[22]  C. Chabris,et al.  Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events , 1999, Perception.

[23]  Eun-Ha Choi,et al.  Crash Factors in Intersection-Related Crashes: An On-Scene Perspective , 2010 .

[24]  Daniel T. Levin,et al.  Unseen and Unaware: Implications of Recent Research on Failures of Visual Awareness for Human-Computer Interface Design , 2004, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[25]  Robert S. Kennedy,et al.  Simulator Sickness Questionnaire: An enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness. , 1993 .

[26]  Daniel J Simons,et al.  The effects of individual differences and task difficulty on inattentional blindness , 2009, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[27]  J. Golding.  Predicting individual differences in motion sickness susceptibility by questionnaire , 2006 .

[28]  M. A. Recarte,et al.  Mental Workload and Visual Impairment: Differences between Pupil, Blink, and Subjective Rating , 2008, The Spanish Journal of Psychology.

[29]  Michelle L. Reyes,et al.  Effects of cognitive load presence and duration on driver eye movements and event detection performance , 2008 .