Citation

Yoo Y, Yang M, Lee S, Baek H, Kim J. Transp. Res. F Traffic Psychol. Behav. 2022; 86: 33-47.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.trf.2022.01.009

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As in-vehicle voice agents increase in popularity, related research is extending to how voice messages can affect the driver's cognitive and emotional states. Accordingly, we investigated how in-vehicle agent (IVA) voice dominance and driving automation can affect the driver's situation awareness (SA), emotion regulation (ER), and trust. To this end, a lab-based experiment was conducted with a medium-fidelity driving simulator using actor-recorded voice agents. Twenty-two female and nineteen male driver-licensed participants were recruited to drive simulated vehicles with voice agents and evaluated. The results demonstrated that compared with the dominant voice, the agent with a submissive voice significantly increased ER in both manual and automated driving. Furthermore, the submissive voice significantly increased trust in automated driving compared with the dominant agent. Cross and synergistic interaction effects exist between voice dominance and driving automation in SA and ER, respectively. This study revealed that both the content of the messages of the IVAs and their voice characteristics are essential for modulating the driver's SA, ER, and trust in driving. It is expected that larger-scale future studies with simulation or on a real road would increase the validity of this study.

Language: en

Keywords

Emotion regulation; In-vehicle agents; Safe driving; Situation awareness; Trust; Voice dominance