Much research on driver attention, including evaluations of in-car equipment, at least implicitly assumes that attention is where the gaze is. Research on the dynamics of visual attention, however, suggests that drivers may use peripheral vision and that they learn its use over time, depending on the task demands and eccentricity. To investigate effects of task load and position on lane keeping, 11 novices and 16 experienced drivers were asked to drive along a straight road using only peripheral vision for lane keeping while doing another task foveally. The task varied in position and in mental load, with two difficulty levels in each of two different tasks. In the visual attention tasks, position had a clearly different effect on lane-keeping performance among novices and the experienced, as measured by the distance covered before crossing a lane boundary. Novices' performance deteriorated with the foveal task at near periphery at the speedometer level, whereas the performance of experienced drivers dropped only when the foveal task was down in the middle console. The result supports the hypothesis that novices need foveal vision at first for lane keeping but, with increasing practice, learn to manage with more peripheral vision. In the arithmetic tasks, however, no consistent experience-dependent task position effects occurred. Different results obtained for different tasks imply that when evaluating in-car facilities, the task characteristics and the respective resource allocation needed should be taken into account.

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The aim of this study was to find out the neuropsychological measures correlating with overlong glances at secondary in-car tasks while driving. Fifteen. patients with brain damage (without clear neurological or neuropsychological restriction on driving a car) and 11 healthy participants drove a route of 126 km and performed a series of secondary tasks while driving on a highway in an instrumented compact car. Four videocameras allowed detailed analysis of glances during in-car tasks. Neuropsychological measures focused on executive functions, memory, visuospatial skills, and fine motor skills. Moreover, patients' emotional self-evaluation and relatives' evaluation of patients' competencies were included. The proportion of overlong glances away from the road during in-car tasks was greater among the patients than. the healthy drivers. The long glances of the patients correlated strongly with motor and visuospatial deficits, cognitive inflexibility, emotional symptoms, and relatives' evaluations of patients' impaired sensomotor abilities. The results suggest that the frequency of overlong glances was increased by 2 factors: (a) impaired motor and visuospatial skills that evidently caused difficulties in the manipulation of the equipment of the secondary tasks, and (b) impairments of executive functions that were likely to decrease the ability to control the risks related to long glances at the in-car tasks. The slowing of speed during secondary tasks was on the average rather slight and not significantly more pronounced among patients than control drivers, indicating that patients failed to reduce their speed and thus the risk related to prolonged glances at in-car tasks.

This study is addressed to time-sharing and primary task control during a secondary task as a function of driving experience. After about 1.5 h of test driving, when well-adapted to the experimental car, 23 novices (less than 5,000 km of driving) and 26 experienced drivers (more than 150,000 km) were asked to change a cassette in a cassette player on an ordinary two-lane road. The task was replicated three times. The results showed no difference between novice and experienced drivers in time-sharing (glance length at the in-car task and at the road), lateral position-keeping (lateral displacement as a function of time at in-car task) or control in relation to oncoming traffic. The only difference occurred in speed control, experienced drivers keeping their speed level constant while novices slowed down somewhat during the secondary task. These data showed, in a supervised experimental setting, a similar linear relationship between time spent on an in-car task and lateral displacement both for novice and experienced drivers, and a similar median time gap of about 2 s to an oncoming vehicle at the moment when both novice and experienced drivers shifted their gaze from the in-car task to the road.