Effects of mental demands on situation awareness during platooning: A driving simulator study

Previous research shows that drivers of automated vehicles are likely to engage in visually demanding tasks, causing impaired situation awareness. How mental task demands affect situation awareness is less clear. In a driving simulator experiment, 33 participants completed three 40-min runs in an automated platoon, each run with a different level of mental task demands. Results showed that high task demands (i.e., performing a 2-back task, a working memory task in which participants had to recall a letter, presented two letters ago) induced high self-reported mental demands (71% on the NASA Task Load Index), while participants reported low levels of self-reported task engagement (measured with the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire) in all three task conditions in comparison to the pre-task measurement. Participants’ situation awareness, as measured using a think-out-loud protocol, was affected by mental task demands, with participants being more involved with the mental task itself (i.e., to remember letters) and less likely to comment on situational features (e.g., car, looking, overtaking) when task demands increased. Furthermore, the authors' results shed light on temporal effects, with heart rate decreasing and self-constructed mental models of automation growing in complexity, with run number. It is concluded that mental task demands reduce situation awareness, and that not only type-of-task, but also time-on-task, should be considered in Human Factors research of automated driving.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2018.04.015
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847817304308
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/13698478
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Heikoop, Daniël D
  • de Winter, Joost C F
  • van Arem, Bart
  • 0000-0001-8316-7794
  • Stanton, Neville A
• Publication Date: 2018-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 193-209
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
  • Volume: 58
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 1369-8478
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13698478

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alertness; Automated vehicle control; Cognition; Driving simulators; Human factors; Intelligent vehicles; Traffic platooning
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01675337
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jul 19 2018 2:45PM