This study deals with one aspect of driving behaviour, i.e. , the sharing of time between two types of activities that the driver is forced to accept as a part of the driving task. Steering and recognition behaviour has been abstracted and explored in the laboratory by analysing performance on a compensatory tracking task taken as an analogue of steering and on a filmed presentation of a sign search-and- recognition task. The relative effects of the interaction between tasks were explored. The main findings of the study were that /1/ where time sharing was required, each type of performance was degraded, /2/ increasing the number of message units appearing in the recognition task did not differentially affect simulated steering performance but did increase the time required for recognition of a key message, /3/ increased speed of the simulated steering task displayed.
Samenvatting