The Study of Characteristic of Attention in Depth of Drivers in Supposed Traffic Environment

Abstract

The number of traffic accidents keeps increasing in China with the development of road traffic environments. From statistical data, it is well known that there are a lot of accidents at twilight time. The cause of these accidents is depending upon the shift of attention in depth according to the changes in twilight. Investigations of the characteristic of shift of attention in depth in three-dimensional (3-D) space by changing periphery luminance when the subjects were moving forward were carried out using a three-dimensional attention measurement system in order to examine the effects of luminance environment on the shift of attention. In the experiments, two kind of luminance condition were used, brightness condition and twilight condition. In each experiment, there were three kinds of clue condition: valid, invalid and neutral condition. It was the location of the appearance of the target relative to the fixation point. Observer moved forward at 0.44 m/s speed, and illuminance were 480~6801times and 95~1351times in the experimental device inner. The subject's task was to judge whether the target presented nearer than fixation point or further than it. Reaction times of the subjects on the clue were measured. As the results, it was clarified that (1) the visual adaptive ability of the subjects had a individual difference, (2) the shift of attention was faster from far to near than from near to far, (3) the reaction time was effected by the attention moved distance, (4) brightness has had very great influence upon the delay of reaction time of the drivers in traffic environment, and the delay of reaction time depended on the quantity of attention moved.