Citation

Serrano J, Di Stasi LL, Megías A, Catena A. Traffic Injury Prev. 2011; 12(6): 630-635.

Affiliation

Learning, Emotion, and Decision Group , Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja , Granada , Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15389588.2011.620661

PMID

22133340

Abstract

Background: In the last 2 decades, cognitive science and the transportation psychology field have dedicated a lot of effort to designing advanced driver support systems. Verbal warning systems are increasingly being implemented in modern automobiles in an effort to increase road safety. Objective: The study presented here investigated the impact of directional speech alert messages on the participants' speed to judge whether or not naturalistic road scenes depicted a situation of impending danger. Method: Thirty-eight volunteers performed a computer-based key-press reaction time task. Results: Findings indicated that semantic content of verbal warning signals can be used for increasing driving safety and improving hazard detection. Furthermore, the classical result regarding signal accuracy is confirmed: directional informative speech messages lead to faster hazard detection compared to drivers who received a high rate of false alarms. Conclusion: Notwithstanding some study limitations (lack of driver experience and low ecological validity), this evidence could provide important information for the specification of future Human-Machine-interaction (HMI) design guidelines.

Language: en