Driver’s Multi-Attribute Task Battery Performance and Attentional Switch Cost Are Correlated with Speeding Behavior in Simulated Driving

Abstract

Speeding is one of the leading factors for traffic casualties. It is important to identify underlying factors related with speeding behavior. Present study aimed to explore the relationship between speeding and two general cognitive abilities: multi-tasking and attention-switching abilities. We measured multi-tasking ability using Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB). The MATB performance includes hit rate and RT for monitoring task, track error for tracking task and control rate for resource management task. We used the attentional blink (AB) task to measure attention-switching ability. The AB refers to people’s inability to detect a second target (T2) that follows within about five hundred milliseconds of an earlier target (T1) in the same location. The attentional switch cost, specifically AB magnitude, is the difference between the highest and lowest accuracy of T2 given correct report of T1 across five T1-T2 intervals. Finally, a driving simulator was used to measure drivers’ speeding behavior. The results showed (1) max speeding ratio was significantly correlated with RT for monitoring task, control rate for resource management and AB magnitude; (2) regression analysis show that MATB performance and Attentional switch cost played the key role in predicting max speeding ratio while controlling the demographic variables, but only MATB performance had a significant effect on speeding duration. Thus MATB performance and attentional switch costs is important to predict speeding behavior in simulated driving.