An Analysis of Driver’s Exogenous Attention During Driving at Night by a Pre-cueing Task

Abstract

This study aims to demonstrate that driver’s cognition during driving at night can be improved by attentional momentum effect. Driver’s cognition of a target often delays due to inhibition of return, which is that exogenous attention is suppressed orienting toward previously inspected locations. Previous studies have suggested that attentional momentum effect relieves inhibition of return. It is considered that driver’s exogenous attention tends to be located on roadside -stores with high-illumination intensity which could cause the inhibition of return resulting in the delay in cognition of a target. This study conducts a pre-cueing task based on dual task paradigm to show attentional momentum effect relieves inhibition of return during driving at night. The response time of the attentional momentum condition was observed to be shorter than the inhibition of return condition. This result suggested that attentional momentum effect led to improve the driver’s cognition during driving at night.