The impact of eye movements and cognitive workload on lateral position variability in driving
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Summary
Driving-simulator study (n=32) dissociating eye-movement eccentricity from cognitive workload as causes of the counter-intuitive reduction in lateral lane-position variability under load. Participants drove nine 5-minute scenarios in a fixed-base simulator under crossed eye-movement (outer/inner/middle license-plate fixation) and workload (just drive / digit classification / backward counting by 3s) conditions while a head-mounted eye tracker confirmed fixation. Increasing workload decreased lateral lane variability, but visual eccentricity affected only one driving measure, indicating workload, not gaze eccentricity, drives the reduction.
Key finding
Cognitive workload, not eye-movement eccentricity, is the dominant cause of reduced lateral lane-position variability during distracted driving.
Methodology
Exp 1: 10 participants, repeated measures across 6 sessions from 26 total. Exp 2: 20 participants, Old/New sequence comparison. On-road driving paradigm with DRT and NASA-TLX measures.
Sample size: Exp 1: N=10; Exp 2: N=20
Quality score: 5 / 5