Effect of Driving Experience on Change Detection Based on Target Relevance and Size

Mueller, Alexandra S; Trick, John M · 2013 · Crossref

DOI: 10.17077/drivingassessment.1510

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Summary

This study investigates how driving experience influences the detection of changes in road traffic scenes, specifically examining the roles of target safety relevance and object size. Previous research on this topic yielded conflicting results regarding whether experienced drivers detect safety-relevant changes faster or more accurately than novices. The authors attribute these discrepancies to methodological flaws in earlier studies, such as ignoring error rates, failing to control for target location, and confounding driving experience with participant age. To address these issues, the study employed a flicker change detection task using controlled stimuli and restricted participants to those under 30 years old to minimize age-related confounds. The experiment involved 38 participants divided into two groups: 19 experienced drivers (average 7 years of experience) and 19 novice drivers (average 0.5 years of experience). Participants viewed pairs of nearly identical road traffic scenes presented on a laptop, with one novel object added in the second image. Targets varied by safety relevance (relevant: vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians; irrelevant: dumpsters, mailboxes) and size (large vs. small). Target locations were counterbalanced between central and peripheral positions. The study measured both response time and error rate for detecting these changes. The results revealed significant differences in accuracy but not in speed between the groups. Experienced drivers demonstrated a significantly lower error rate than novice drivers, particularly for irrelevant targets, while performance on relevant targets did not differ between groups. This suggests that experienced drivers employ more efficient selection strategies for safety-relevant information, leaving spare cognitive resources to process irrelevant details. Regarding object size, large relevant targets were detected faster than small relevant ones, whereas size had no effect on the detection speed of irrelevant targets. No significant interaction was found between driving experience and target size, contrary to the hypothesis that experienced drivers would be better at detecting small, less conspicuous road users. The findings indicate that driving experience enhances the efficiency of visual search strategies, allowing experienced drivers to maintain high accuracy for safety-critical information while also monitoring the broader environment. The lack of difference in detecting small versus large relevant targets among experienced drivers suggests that the traditional flicker task may not be sensitive enough to capture expertise effects related to visual conspicuity. The study implies that novice drivers may lack the automated processing skills to efficiently filter relevant information, resulting in fewer resources for peripheral or irrelevant monitoring. These insights have practical implications for hazard anticipation training, suggesting that programs should focus on teaching novices to prioritize and detect small, vulnerable road users more effectively.

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Topics

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• inattentional change blindness
• useful field of view
• novice drivers
• visual search
• cognitive capacity variation