Citation

Sivak M, Flannagan MJ, Ensing M, Simmons CJ. Int. J. Veh. Des. 1991; 12(2): 152-159.

Affiliation

Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study evaluated the effect of task difficulty on discomfort glare. Subjects performed two tasks on each trial. The first was a gap-detection task, in which the subject indicated whether the gap had appeared on the top or bottom edge of the outline of a briefly projected square. The difficulty of this task was manipulated by changing the size of the gap in the square. The second was a discomfort-glare rating, in which the subject gave a numerical rating of the discomfort experienced from a glare source that was presented simultaneously with the gap-detection stimulus. The hypothesis was that the resulting changes in the difficulty of the gap-detection task would influence discomfort glare. The results indicate that (1) an increase in the difficulty of the gap-detection task resulted in an increase in discomfort glare, and (2) subjects with poorer overall gap-detection performance tended to assign more discomfort to the glare stimuli than subjects with better gap-detection performance. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that discomfort glare is related to task difficulty. Consequently, a valid evaluation of discomfort glare in a given situation requires the presence of the relevant visual task. One interpretation is that task difficulty influences discomfort glare by modifying an observer's perceived level of visual impairement.