Chapter 18 - How Much Do Novice Drivers See? The Effects of Demand on Visual Search Strategies in Novice and Experienced Drivers

Abstract

This chapter discusses the effects of cognitive and visual demand upon visual search strategies during driving. It also describes whether these can be used to differentiate between novices who have recently passed their test and more experienced drivers. Visual demands are closely related with task demands, for as the dominant sensory modality in driving is vision, an increase in task difficulty will usually coincide with an increase in the complexity of the visual scene. An increment in visual demand is an increase in visual clutter or complexity, as opposed to increases in cognitive demand, such as an increase in the processing demands of a particular stimulus perhaps due to an increase in its relevance to a current context. It is observed that as stimuli becomes more realistic; the two become harder to separate. The two types of demand —visual/task demands and cognitive demands—are rarely fully separated; the majority of driving research has focused on task demands rather than cognitive demands. The chapter highlights the consistent results that an increase in the complexity of the driving task tends to increase one's active search of the scene, producing a wider spread of search.