The distractions of driving are a popular area of research. Recent studies have looked at what distracts drivers and what other failures of awareness may contribute to traffic accidents. The goal of this paper is to look at research and explain how change blindness can possibly effect driving.
One failure of awareness that seems to have a connection with traffic accidents is change blindness. Rensink (2002) proposed that change blindness occurs when a change within the scene goes unnoticed, due to the inability or difficulty to detect it. Resink (2002) also explained that change blindness can take place during a disruption in vision, such as an eye- movement or a blink.
Lees, Sparks, Lee, and Rizzo (2007) looked at the high numbers of traffic accidents that occurred among elders and conducted research to undercover some of the common risk factors. Lees et al. (2007) used two types of attention related tasks to carry out their research: useful field of view and change blindness. Useful field of view relates to memory and decision making tasks whilst change blindness relates to vision and attention (Lees et al., 2007). While both are important, attention is what is required for noticing changes; attention determines the ability to point out changes and look at a picture as a whole (Pringle, Irwin, Kramer, & Atchley, 2001). The experiment used both a driving simulator and real driving conditions. While participants were in the driving simulator, controlled “hazardous” objects were added to the driving conditions. Lees et al. (2007) then asked his participants to explain what those hazardous objects were (e.g a vehicle failing to stop at a stop sign) and were assessed to see if they acted appropriately. If the participants acted a...
... middle of paper ...
...Pringle, H. L., Irwin, D. E., Kramer, A. F., & Atchley, P. (2001). The role of attentional breadth in perceptual change detection. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(1), 89-95.
Rensink, R. A. (2002). Change detection. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 245-277.
Silverman, M. E., & Mack, A. (2006). Change blindness and priming: When it does and does not occur. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 15(2), 409-422.
Velichkovsky, B. M., Dornhoefer, S. M., Kopf, M., Helmert, J., & Joos, M. (2002). Change detection and occlusion modes in road-traffic scenarios.Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 5(2), 99-109.
White, C. B., & Caird, J. K. (2010). The blind date: The effects of change blindness, passenger conversation and gender on looked-but-failed-to-see (LBFTS) errors. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 42(6), 1822-1830.
Statistics show 16- to 17-year-old driver death rates increase with each additional passenger, which is due to distracted driving. Taking your eyes off the road for 2 (two) seconds, at 60 mph, means you have driven blindly for half the length of a football field. The risk of fatality is 3.6 times higher, when they are driving with passengers than when alone. For many years, the correlation between driving behavior and age has interested highway safety researchers and administrators. It is general knowledge that the greatest risk of motor vehicle crash...
In 1995, a Boston police officer responded to a 911 call regarding a shooting. Spotting a potential suspect he gave chase. During the pursuit the officer ran by an assault in progress without stopping to assist the victim. Later, he would claim that he never saw the assault because he was focused on chasing his suspect (Chabris, Weinberger, Fontaine & Simmons, 2011). This is an example of inattentional blindness or the failure to perceive objects or events when attention is focused elsewhere (Mack & Rock, 1998). Parents distracted by children, teenagers talking on cellphones and even professionals trained to be observant of their environment can fall prey to this phenomenon. Though people are not susceptible to inattentional blindness to the same degree, it is feasible that some may be less susceptible due to difficulties staying focused on a task at hand. This paper will examine the possibility that elderly people are less susceptible to inattentional blindness due to a decrease in attention skills.
Seppa, Nathan. "Impactful Distraction: Talking While Driving Poses Dangers That People Seem Unable To See." Science News 184.4 (2013): 20. Master FILE Premier. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
I find the fact that distracted driving has caused so many deaths exceedingly tragic, however it should not surprise me. Additionally I’m inclined to the view that this issue – unfortunately - has become a more controversial problem in proportion to earlier. I don’t think that there exists a specifically solution in relation to this problem – if so not yet - however I’m convinced that there eventually has to b...
In José Saramongo’s novel Blindness, he states, “I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.” He explains that people think they can see, but they are truly blind because they are blind to certain ideas or matters that are essential. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Albert Camus’ The Stranger, characters’ blindness causes them to act irrationally, which often has fatal repercussions.
Seppa, Nathan. “Impactful Distraction: Talking While Driving Poses Dangers that Drivers Seem Unable to See.” Science News 184.4 (2013):20-24.Readers Guide Full Text Mega. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.
Today’s society appears to be constantly on the go. People seem to be pulled in multiple directions at once. Individuals never appear to have enough time to complete tasks that continually accumulate. It can be difficult to criticize someone that tries to make the most out every minute. Unfortunately, some of today’s drivers show a lack of judgment and trying to perform other tasks, while behind the wheel. People may feel this is best use time while getting to a destination. Occasionally, the small amount of time that people are trying to gain results in a time consuming accident. With modern conveniences that are geared toward an on the go public, individuals appear to be too preoccupied to driving safely.
81 Exploring Psychology). Inattentional blindness just goes to show that humans are usually good at focusing, but only on one thing at a time. When you’re so focused on one thing, your mind is completely blind to other events that may be occurring. An example in the article of this is when you’re busy focusing on finding a seat in a movie theater, that you never notice your friends frantically waving their arms around trying to get your attention (Simons, Chabins). By not noticing your friends, you have fallen to the inattentional blindness focus of the experiment. Inattentional blindness is like a horse that has blinders on during a race, it is a sort of tunnel vision of an individual’s
Tun, McCoy, & Wingfield (2009) found that extra effort at the sensory-perceptual level in relation to hearing loss has negative consequences to subsequent recollection, an effect that may be further instigated as an individual ages. The study measured the degree to which age and hearing loss may press on processing resources. They found evidence that suggested the added effort required for advantageous perceptions by older individuals are substantially stressed age-related memory deficits, even in the presences of sensory impairments (Tun, McCoy, & Wingfield, 2009). Additionally, Medeiros-Ward, Cooper, & Strayer (2014) reported on the concept of hierarchical control and the role it can play in distracted driving. Their findings indicated that when drivers are simultaneously involved in a secondary cognitive task in a windy driving condition, attention was drawn away from driving and there was a decline in the ability to maintain lane position (Medeiros-Ward, Cooper, & Strayer, 2014). In looking at factors that impair attention while behind the wheel, one study worked to understand how attentional costs could have a greater impact on the surrounding environment. This was tested by assessing the detection of external warning sounds in vehicles (Slawinski & MacNeil, 2002). They investigated the effects of age on the external vehicular warning sounds in the presence of
In his 2002 review, Ronald A. Rensink, divides the study of change detection into three phases (Rensink, 2002). The first phase, from mid-1950s to mid-1960s, investigates change detection when change occurs in a saccade. Whilst change detection was considered an easy task at the time, the studies showed poor results proving that detection is not a simple task after all. In the second phase he combines the studies on limits of detection of gap contingent changes with those on visual integration as a basis of limited capacity visual short-term memory. And finally, in the third phase, Rensink emphasizes the idea that change detection involves mechanisms central to the way humans perceive the world.
Have you ever been on a cell phone while driving or seen someone on his or her cell phone while driving? This is distracted driving at its finest. Whether you are looking at a text, changing radio stations, applying makeup, or anything else that takes your mind or eyes off the road is distracted driving. Distracted driving killed around 3,000 people in 2011 (Bauers). Car crashes are the leading cause of teenagers in the United States. If you don’t think you are distracted behind the wheel think again, many people think they aren’t distracted till something bad happens to them, like a crash, driving into a ditch, or running a red light and get a ticket for it. Distracted driving is a major problem and most people don’t know their distracted or what is a distraction to him or her.
Our attention is very selective when it comes to getting information from our environment. We could be looking at everything within our environment and miss changes that occur while looking. According to Rensink, O’Regan and Clark (1997), attention is a key factor, meaning when our attention is focused on the area of change then change can be detected. When we fail to detect change, it can result in change blindness. In support of this idea, Simons and Levin (1998) suggest that change blindness occurs if there is a lack of “precise” visual representation of their surroundings. In other words, a person can be looking at an object and not fully notice a change.
United States. Department of Transportation. “Faces of Distracted Driving”. Distraction.gov. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2010.
Classical theories demonstrating the inattentional blindness paradigm are (1) the perceptual load, (2) inattentional amnesia and (3) expectation.
“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers” -Dave Barry, comedian. The number of accidents over the last ten years have drastically increased, drivers are paying less attention to the road itself. Many individuals behind the wheel of a car believe that their driving does not affect the road conditions, however it always will. The driving habits of today are catastrophic due to the reasoning that the driving will affect other lives through reckless or distracted driving, and disobeying traffic laws.