Conference Proceeding

How Do Task Structure and Uncertainty Influence Task-Interleaving Strategies
 During Distracted Driving?

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Abstract

During distracted driving, people commonly alternate or interleaveattention between driving and another task. One factor that influences taskinterleaving is task structure. Specifically, people tend to switch between tasks atsub-tasks boundaries. Uncertainty about the roadway environment during glancesaway from the road, however, may play a larger role in shaping task interleavingstrategies during distracted driving. The purpose of this study was to examine taskinterleaving strategies when drivers completed a distracting task of various subtasksizes. Participants entered phone numbers, modified zip codes, or digitstrings while performing a lane-keeping task. In general, the time between buttonpresses in the secondary task was significantly greater between sub-tasks thanwithin sub-tasks. However, as sub-tasks became larger drivers switched morefrequently within sub-tasks than between sub-tasks. Additionally, participants’ didnot change their visual sampling strategies as the size of sub-tasks increased.Thus, uncertainty influenced decisions to switch between two interleaved tasks inthe driving environment more than sub-task boundaries.

How to Cite:

Kidd, D., (2011) “How Do Task Structure and Uncertainty Influence Task-Interleaving Strategies
 During Distracted Driving?”, Driving Assessment Conference 6(2011), 321-328. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/drivingassessment.1415

Rights: Copyright © 2011 the author(s)