Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada.
Toyota Research Institute, Palo Alto, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2021 Dec 20;6(1):80. doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00348-4.
While driving, dangerous situations can occur quickly, and giving drivers extra time to respond may make the road safer for everyone. Extensive research on attentional cueing in cognitive psychology has shown that targets are detected faster when preceded by a spatially valid cue, and slower when preceded by an invalid cue. However, it is unknown how these standard laboratory-based cueing effects may translate to dynamic, real-world situations like driving, where potential targets (i.e., hazardous events) are inherently more complex and variable. Observers in our study were required to correctly localize hazards in dynamic road scenes across three cue conditions (temporal, spatiotemporal valid and spatiotemporal invalid), and a no-cue baseline. All cues were presented at the first moment the hazardous situation began. Both types of valid cues reduced reaction time (by 58 and 60 ms, respectively, with no significant difference between them, a larger effect than in many classic studies). In addition, observers' ability to accurately localize hazards dropped 11% in the spatiotemporal invalid condition, a result with dangerous implications on the road. This work demonstrates that, in spite of this added complexity, classic cueing effects persist-and may even be enhanced-for the detection of real-world hazards, and that valid cues have the potential to benefit drivers on the road.
在驾驶过程中，危险情况可能会迅速发生，为驾驶员提供额外的反应时间可能会使每个人都更安全。认知心理学中关于注意提示的广泛研究表明，当目标前面有一个空间有效的提示时，目标会被更快地检测到，而当目标前面有一个无效的提示时，目标会被更慢地检测到。然而，目前尚不清楚这些基于标准实验室的提示效果如何转化为动态的、真实世界的驾驶情况，因为潜在的目标（即危险事件）本质上更加复杂和多变。在我们的研究中，观察者需要在三个提示条件（时间、时空有效和时空无效）和一个无提示基线的情况下，正确定位动态道路场景中的危险。所有提示都在危险情况开始的第一刻呈现。两种有效的提示都减少了反应时间（分别减少了 58 和 60 毫秒，它们之间没有显著差异，比许多经典研究中的效果更大）。此外，观察者在时空无效条件下准确定位危险的能力下降了 11%，这一结果对道路上的安全具有危险的影响。这项工作表明，尽管存在这种额外的复杂性，经典的提示效果仍然存在——甚至可能增强——对于现实世界中危险的检测，并且有效提示有可能使道路上的驾驶员受益。
