NOISE AND DRIVER PERFORMANCE

The demands of actual autombile driving and concurrent noise stress on human information-processing capacity for eight licensed, college-aged drivers were estimated from the decrement in performance on the delayed digit recall subsidiary task, using multivariate techniques and a counterbalanced design. Under high load, drivers were much more likely to reduce accuracy than sacrifice speed. However, noise did not result in driving error when presented in the absence of additional load. This conclusion parallels the 1973 findings of Moscowitz, who investigated the effect of alcohol on driving performance. As expected, the subsidiary task measure was sensitive to the additional information-processing demands imposed by the unpredictable noise stimulus, but contrary to expectation inclusion of the subsidiary task tended to interact slightly with noise in impairing driving performance. Perhaps in the low-risk driving environment, main tenance of performance on the subsidiary task may have had sufficiently high subjective utility to demand a disproportionately large share of information-processing capacity. /SRIS/

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00219010
• Corporate Authors:

  American Psychological Association

  750 First Street, NE
  Washington, DC  United States  20002-4242
• Authors:
  • Finkelman, J M
  • Zeitlin, L R
  • Filippi, J A
  • Friend, M A
• Publication Date: 1977-12

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 713-718
• Serial:
  • Journal of Applied Psychology
  • Volume: 62
  • Issue Number: 6
  • Publisher: American Psychological Association
  • ISSN: 0021-9010

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Driver performance; Drivers; Loads; Personnel performance; Sound level; Speed; Statistical analysis
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00178510
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Safety Council Safety Research Info Serv
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 14 1978 12:00AM