Measuring distraction: the peripheral detection task

Abstract

The possibilities for measuring workload or driver distraction by means of the Peripheral Detection Task during driving with in-vehicle equipment were investigated in a driving simulator experiment. The results show that the Peripheral Detection Task is a very sensitive method of measuring peaks in workload, induced by either a critical scenario or messages provided by a driver support system. The more demanding the task, the more cues will be missed and the longer the response times to the Peripheral Detection Task. Also, the experiment showed that the hypothesis that PDT measures the width of the functional field of view (perceptual tunnelling) is not supported. The results favour the ‘cognitive tunnelling’ hypothesis. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the PDT measures the (cognitive) selectivity of attention.