Dissociating eye movements and workload on lateral lane position variability
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Summary
Three fixed-base driving-simulator experiments designed to independently manipulate eye movements and cognitive workload, isolating their contributions to lateral lane-position variability. Across the three experiments, eye-movement manipulations played only a modest role in lateral variability, while cognitive workload played a substantially larger role: increases in workload reduced lane-position variability even when gaze patterns were held constant. The authors interpret the results within Logan and Crump's hierarchical-control framework, in which inner (automatic) and outer (controlled) loops operate on lane keeping and outer-loop interference can perturb the inner-loop control of lateral position.
Key finding
Cognitive workload reduces lateral lane-position variability largely independently of where drivers are looking; gaze concentration is not the primary mediator of the workload-induced reduction in lane variability, consistent with hierarchical control accounts of skilled lane keeping.
Methodology
Three within-subjects fixed-base driving-simulator experiments orthogonally manipulating eye-movement patterns (guided fixations) and cognitive workload (secondary-task load). Lateral position variability (SD of lane position) was the primary dependent measure across experiments.
Sample size: Three within-subjects simulator experiments (specific Ns not extracted from sampled pages)
Quality score: 5 / 5