Citation

Zhao N, Chen W, Xuan Y, Mehler B, Reimer B, Fu X. Ergonomics 2014; 57(7): 998-1007.

Affiliation

State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00140139.2014.909952

PMID

24787715

Abstract

The 'looked-but-failed-to-see' phenomenon is crucial to driving safety. Previous research utilising change detection tasks related to driving has reported inconsistent effects of driver experience on the ability to detect changes in static driving scenes. Reviewing these conflicting results, we suggest that drivers' increased ability to detect changes will only appear when the task requires a pattern of visual attention distribution typical of actual driving. By adding a distant fixation point on the road image, we developed a modified change blindness paradigm and measured detection performance of drivers and non-drivers. Drivers performed better than non-drivers only in scenes with a fixation point. Furthermore, experience effect interacted with the location of the change and the relevance of the change to driving. These results suggest that learning associated with driving experience reflects increased skill in the efficient distribution of visual attention across both the central focus area and peripheral objects.

Language: en