Abstract
In the present study, we investigated the effects of the different traffic on the driver’s situation awareness and the mental workload (MWL). The task used in this study was a medium fidelity, 3-dimensional simulation of a driving environment. The simulation required participants to drive the user’s car and perform a real-world driving task. After the simulated driving, participants were asked to complete two tests which assessed their situation awareness (SA). The mental workload measures in this study consisted of the physiological measures and the subjective assessment. Every participant performed two different traffic simulated driving conditions, one was low traffic, the other was high traffic. The results showed that with the increasing of traffic, the driving performance did not worsen, however participant’s mental workload increased, at the same time, the participant’s situation awareness performance deteriorated.Meanwhile, our results also demonstrated that recall-based SA test and recognition-based test was heterogeneous.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kamilla, B.A.: Situation Awareness and Working Memory: an Integration of an Applied Concept with a Fundamental Cognitive Process, dissertation (2004)
Endsley, M.R.: Theoretical Underpinnings of Situation Awareness Analysis and Measurement. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ (2000)
Jones, D.G., Endsley, M.R.: Sources of situation awareness errors in aviation. Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine 67, 507–512 (1996)
Mathews, M.L., Byrant, D.J., Webb, R.D.G.: Situation Awareness and Driving?Literature Review and Analysis (No. T8080-8-1348/001/ss). Transport Canada, Montreal, QB (1999)
Endsley, M.R.: Measurement of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37, 65–84 (1995)
Wickens, C.D., Hollands, J.G.: Engineering Psychology and Human Performance. Prentice Hall, New Jersey (1999)
Johannsdottir, K.R., LeEevre, J.-A., Herdman, C.: Cognitive system engineering (CSE) framework for evaluating cockpit interfaces. In: The Proceedings of The Twelfth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Colombus, OH, The Ohio State University (2003)
Gugerty, L.J.: Situation awareness during driving: Explicit and implicit knowledge in dynamic spatial memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied 3, 42–46 (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hao, X., Wang, Z., Yang, F., Wang, Y., Guo, Y., Zhang, K. (2007). The Effect of Traffic on Situation Awareness and Mental Workload: Simulator-Based Study. In: Harris, D. (eds) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics. EPCE 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73331-7_31
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73331-7_31
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73330-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73331-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)