Sensitivity of Detection Response Task (DRT) to the Driving Demand and Task Difficulty

Bruyas, Marie-Pierre; Dumont, Laetitia · 2013 · Bruyas MP, Dumont L

DOI: 10.17077/drivingassessment.1468

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This study investigates the sensitivity of the Detection Response Task (DRT) to varying levels of driving demand and secondary task difficulty, addressing its potential standardization by ISO for assessing cognitive load and driver distraction. The research aims to determine if DRT can effectively distinguish between different cognitive and visual-manual workloads. The experiment utilized a fixed-based driving simulator with 16 participants performing three DRT versions: Head-mounted (visual), Remote (visual), and Tactile. Participants engaged in two driving scenarios—a low-demand highway and a high-demand curvy road—while simultaneously performing secondary tasks. These included cognitive auditory tasks (N-Back at easy and hard levels) and visual-manual tasks (Surrogate Reference Task, SuRT, at easy and hard levels). The results demonstrated that DRT response times significantly increased with higher driving demand, confirming the method’s sensitivity to road complexity. Furthermore, response times varied significantly with the difficulty of cognitive auditory tasks, increasing from baseline to easy N-Back and then to hard N-Back. However, the DRT failed to distinguish between easy and hard visual-manual tasks; response times for both SuRT levels were statistically similar and higher than cognitive tasks. While participants subjectively rated the hard SuRT as significantly more difficult than the easy version, their DRT performance did not reflect this difference. The tactile DRT yielded significantly lower response times than the visual versions, though no difference was found between the two visual modalities. The authors attribute the lack of differentiation in visual-manual tasks to attentional allocation strategies and a potential ceiling effect. Because SuRT is a self-paced task, drivers likely prioritized maintaining DRT performance by neglecting the secondary task when workload became excessive, particularly in the hard condition. This strategic compensation masked the increased cognitive load in DRT metrics. Consequently, while DRT is sensitive to driving demand and cognitive auditory load, its ability to discriminate between levels of visual-manual difficulty is limited. The findings suggest that DRT may reach its measurement limits in high-workload, self-paced multitasking scenarios, highlighting the need to consider how drivers prioritize attention when using this method for safety assessment.

Key finding

DRT response times increase with driving demand and cognitive auditory task difficulty, but show no sensitivity to visual-manual task difficulty differences due to ceiling effects, suggesting DRT is more sensitive to cognitive than visual-manual load.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 16

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• mental demand
• workload measurement
• stress driving
• temporal
• visual occlusion
• road complexity

Information type

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• Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data
• Methodological Resource: measurement protocol, validation psychometrics