Effect of Attentional Disengagement on Driver Inattention While Driving on Expressway

Abstract

This study aims to clarify attentional disengagement have an effect on improving driver’s detection of a fallen object on expressway. People often detect a target late because vigilance decrease, which is deterioration in the ability to keep attention to a target over prolonged periods of time. Previous researches have suggested it was effective to instantaneously disengage attention from a target in order to improve vigilance decrement. Drivers driving on expressway keep attention to a particular point in front, and it is possible to cause vigilance decrement and detect late a fallen object on expressway. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether attentional disengagement improves detection of a fallen object by a selective adaptation task. As the result, the response time of the disengaged condition was shorter than the engaged condition. This result suggested that it led to improve the driver’s detection of fallen object by attentional disengagement.