title: Supporting anticipation in driving through attentional and interpretational in-vehicle displays.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper evaluates two different types of in-vehicle interfaces to support anticipation in driving: one aids attention allocation and the other aids interpretation of traffic in addition to attention allocation.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Anticipation is a competency that has been shown to facilitate safety and eco-driving through the efficient positioning of a vehicle for probable, upcoming changes in traffic. This competency has been shown to improve with driving experience. In an earlier simulator study, we showed that compared to novice drivers, experienced drivers exhibited a greater number of timely actions to avoid upcoming traffic conflicts. In this study, we seek to facilitate anticipation in general and for novice drivers in particular, who appear to lack the competency. We hypothesize that anticipation depends on two major steps and that it can be supported by aiding each: (1) conscious perception of relevant cues, and (2) effective processing of these cues to create a situational assessment as a basis for anticipation of future developments.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a simulator experiment with 24 experienced and 24 novice drivers to evaluate two interfaces that were designed to aid the two hypothesized steps of anticipation. The attentional interface was designed to direct attention toward the most relevant cue. The interpretational interface represented several cues, and in addition to directing attention also aimed to aid sense-making of these cues.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results confirmed our hypothesis that novice drivers' anticipation performance, as measured through timely actions to avoid upcoming traffic conflicts, would be improved with either interface type. However, results contradicted our expectation that novice drivers would obtain larger improvements with the interpretational interface. Experienced drivers performed better than novice drivers to begin with and did not show any statistically significant improvements with either interface.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Both interfaces improved anticipation performance for novice drivers. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of these interfaces in a wider variety of driving conditions, such as when the driver is multitasking.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada. Electronic address: pstahl@mie.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Stahl
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada. Electronic address: donmez@mie.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Birsen
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Donmez
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada. Electronic address: jamieson@mie.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Greg A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Jamieson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological; D001288:Attention; D001334:Automobile Driving; D001336:Automobiles; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011336:Probability; D012449:Safety; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anticipation; Driver behavior; Driving experience; Driving simulator; In-vehicle displays; Novice drivers