The Effects of Vehicle Automation on Driver Engagement: The Case of Adaptive Cruise Control and Mind Wandering.

OBJECTIVE: This field study examined the effects of adaptive cruise control (ACC) on mind wandering prevalence. BACKGROUND: ACC relieves the driver of the need to regulate vehicle speed and following distance, which may result in safety benefits. However, if ACC reduces the amount of attentional resources drivers must devote to driving, then drivers who use ACC may experience increased periods of mind wandering, which could reduce safety. METHODS: Participants drove a prescribed route on a public road twice, once using ACC and once driving manually. Mind wandering rates were assessed throughout the drive using auditory probes, which occurred at random intervals and required the participant to indicate whether or not they were mind wandering. Measures of physiological arousal and driving performance were also recorded. RESULTS: No evidence of increased mind wandering was found when drivers used ACC. In fact, female drivers reported reduced rates of mind wandering when driving with ACC relative to manual driving. Driving with ACC also tended to be associated with increased physiological arousal and improved driving behavior. CONCLUSION: Use of ACC did not encourage increased mind wandering or negatively affect driving performance. In fact, the results indicate that ACC may have positive effects on driver safety among drivers who have limited experience with the technology. APPLICATION: Driver characteristics, such as level of experience with in-vehicle technology and gender, should be considered when investigating driver engagement during ACC use. Field research on vehicle automation may provide valuable insights over and above studies conducted in driving simulators.

Object Recognition in Mental Representations: Directions for Exploring Diagnostic Features through Visual Mental Imagery.

One of the fundamental goals of object recognition research is to understand how a cognitive representation produced from the output of filtered and transformed sensory information facilitates efficient viewer behavior. Given that mental imagery strongly resembles perceptual processes in both cortical regions and subjective visual qualities, it is reasonable to question whether mental imagery facilitates cognition in a manner similar to that of perceptual viewing: via the detection and recognition of distinguishing features. Categorizing the feature content of mental imagery holds potential as a reverse pathway by which to identify the components of a visual stimulus which are most critical for the creation and retrieval of a visual representation. This review will examine the likelihood that the information represented in visual mental imagery reflects distinctive object features thought to facilitate efficient object categorization and recognition during perceptual viewing. If it is the case that these representational features resemble their sensory counterparts in both spatial and semantic qualities, they may well be accessible through mental imagery as evaluated through current investigative techniques. In this review, methods applied to mental imagery research and their findings are reviewed and evaluated for their efficiency in accessing internal representations, and implications for identifying diagnostic features are discussed. An argument is made for the benefits of combining mental imagery assessment methods with diagnostic feature research to advance the understanding of visual perceptive processes, with suggestions for avenues of future investigation.