Cognitive Workload and the Driver : Understanding the Effects of Cognitive Workload on Driving from a Human Information Processing Perspective

Sammanfattning: This doctoral dissertation in psychology focuses on present day transport research issues. Society is affected by the way that our transport system works. In one way or another, the use of the transport system involves different levels of human involvement and control. The main focus of this dissertation is to understand some important effects of cognitive workload on driving. The driver’s cognitive workload is related to human information processing capacity and the use and allocation of the driver’s attention. In-vehicle technologies are of particular interest in the context of driver workload and human information processing. The rationale of this thesis starts with the need to explore and develop a sensitive and objective measure of cognitive workload using the peripheral detection task (PDT) method. The next step continues to study the effects of cognitive workload on the human information processing stages (HIPS) framework and the way in which human information processing can be affected by performance shaping factors (PSFs). One of the PSFs had a beneficial effect on performance (experience) and one had a detrimental effect on performance (distraction). In summary, it is clear that the human driver is limited in the number and the complexity of the tasks he or she can perform at any given time. Moreover, making mistakes, to err, is part of being human; we are fallible. It is impossible to eliminate all driver error so it is therefore important to create an environment for the driver so that his or her slips, lapses and mistakes can be detected and recovered.