Abstract
While driving, dangerous situations can occur quickly, and giving drivers extra time to respond may make the road safer for everyone. Extensive research on attentional cueing in cognitive psychology has shown that targets are detected faster when preceded by a spatially valid cue, and slower when preceded by an invalid cue. However, it is unknown how these standard laboratory-based cueing effects may translate to dynamic, real-world situations like driving, where potential targets (i.e., hazardous events) are inherently more complex and variable. Observers in our study were required to correctly localize hazards in dynamic road scenes across three cue conditions (temporal, spatiotemporal valid and spatiotemporal invalid), and a no-cue baseline. All cues were presented at the first moment the hazardous situation began. Both types of valid cues reduced reaction time (by 58 and 60 ms, respectively, with no significant difference between them, a larger effect than in many classic studies). In addition, observers’ ability to accurately localize hazards dropped 11% in the spatiotemporal invalid condition, a result with dangerous implications on the road. This work demonstrates that, in spite of this added complexity, classic cueing effects persist—and may even be enhanced—for the detection of real-world hazards, and that valid cues have the potential to benefit drivers on the road.
Highlights
Driving safely requires perceiving and reacting to dangerous situations or road hazards promptly to avoid a collision (Alberti et al, 2014; Crundall, 2016; Underwood et al, 2013; Wolfe et al, 2020a, b)
Treating our no-cue condition as a baseline, we found shorter reaction times in the spatiotemporal valid cue condition (63 ms faster than baseline; mean, 479 ms, SEM, 23 ms; t(297) = 2.78, p = 0.03, d = 0.22) and in the temporal cue condition (61 ms faster than baseline; mean, 481 ms, SEM, 28 ms; t(297) = 2.71, p = 0.036, d = 0.22), indicating that participants were able to detect hazards more quickly in the videos given either a valid spatiotemporal cue or a temporal cue
We found no significant difference in mean reaction time between the spatiotemporal valid and the temporal conditions (t(297) = 0.07, p = 0.99, d = 0.01), suggesting a similar reaction time benefit of each of these cues
Summary
Driving safely requires perceiving and reacting to dangerous situations or road hazards promptly to avoid a collision (Alberti et al, 2014; Crundall, 2016; Underwood et al, 2013; Wolfe et al, 2020a, b). A driver’s primary perceptual task is to acquire sufficient information about their environment in order to respond safely and promptly (Wolfe et al, 2020a, b). This is already challenging for many drivers, and is made worse by the problem of driver distraction (Strayer & Cooper, 2015; Strayer et al, 2015; Wolfe et al, 2019) which may limit drivers’. As we discuss, these well-known results are derived from experiments with simple stimuli and little time pressure. Does this effect extend to the complex situations that drivers encounter on the road?
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