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International audienceThe use of driving simulators to assess driving abilities is often controversial because of their artificiality. Our aim is thus to tackle this question by estimating and comparing new indicators such as the mental workload, the psychological feeling (e.g., stress, anxi- ety, pleasure, and mastery), and feeling of presence when driving a simulator and a real vehicle (either one’s own or one that belongs to a driving school). We are most inter- ested in a particular sort of real-world driving: the driving school. This situation has two advantages: It matches our own particular interest in the evaluation of driving abilities and, to some extent, it is as artificial as driving in a simulator. Fourteen expert drivers participated in this study. Each driver was invited to complete two questionnaires (i.e., the NASA-TLX and Questionnaire of Psychological Feeling) that relate to the various driving conditions (i.e., simulator, driving school vehicle, and personal vehicle). The heart rate of drivers was also recorded at rest and during some of the driving condi- tions. Our results indicate that the feeling of presence was, for some of its component parts, identical in both the simulator and in a real car. Moreover, in both the simulator and real car, none of the assessments of presence revealed values that were close to 100%; indeed, sometimes they were considerably lower. This result leads us to believe that presence may often be underestimated in virtual environments because of the lack of an objective value of reference in the real world. Moreover, results obtained for mental workload and affective feeling indicate that a simulator can be a useful tool for the initial resumption of driving after a period off the road. In particular, a simulator can help to avoid the sort of stress that can lead to task failure or a deterioration in per- formance

International audienceAlthough the benefits of haptic shared control of the steering wheel have been repeatedly demonstrated, longitudinal studies of how drivers adapt to this kind of system are still lacking. The present study addressed this question by comparing two groups of participants in a driving simulator for an extended time period; one group drove with a shared control system and the other drove without. After the practice, all participants drove a final trial with shared control during which a failure of the system occurred. The results show that the evolution of driving performance and the way in which drivers monitored their performance was similar for the two groups. This suggests that the drivers quickly updated their internal model of the steering system dynamics at the sensorimotor level, without further behavioural adaptation afterwards. However, it appears that the internal model was consolidated with repeated use of the system, which translated as a difficulty to compensate for the system's failure. In addition, it appears that drivers did not attempt to maintain a level of task difficulty when steering was facilitated

Résumé Les mécanismes de la pression temporelle liée au travail ou à l’activité ont été relativement peu étudiés. Les raisons de cette insuffisance sont analysées et les limites des modélisations disponibles sont décrites. Les variables à prendre en compte au regard de la pression temporelle sont illustrées à partir de données bibliographiques et de résultats obtenus par les auteurs lors d’études conduites chez des enfants piétons, des conducteurs de véhicules et des salariés de centres d’appels téléphoniques. Sont en particulier traitées l’incidence des enjeux motivationnels, l’incertitude et la contagion intersituationnelle, ainsi que les conséquences négatives mais aussi positives de la pression temporelle. Des pistes méthodologiques pour mieux aborder l’étude de la pression temporelle et les interventions psychoergonomiques sont esquissées.