Colorado State Programs & People
The Backseat Driver Is In Your Head
We're going places, but how quickly and safely?
Published May 2008
Go straight three miles, then take a right. From there, take the second left, go over the hill, take a right, and you'll reach your destination – if you can remember the directions. New research, though, may help drivers find their way – and possibly get there more safely.
Nik Olsen takes a virtual spin around the neighborhood in a psychology research driving simulator.
How people learn complex skills
Ben Clegg, Colorado State University cognitive psychologist, is exploring just how well drivers do when they receive varying amounts of information on where they're heading. Would just a map be better than only verbal directions, or vice versa? How about if a driver is given both?
Whether you’re navigating through midtown Manhattan, exploring winding dirt roads of the Rockies or negotiating CSU's campus, finding your way based on travel directions is a process of acquiring cognitive skills, Clegg says. He's researching how people learn complex skills and to what extent they learn at a constant rate over time.
Driving safety improvements
Advancements made in this area of cognitive psychology can have far-reaching impacts. More than 1 million people each year are killed in traffic accidents worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Even slight adjustments to vehicles or traffic laws may save many lives.
"A lot of questions have been raised about the safety of talking on a cell phone while driving, which emphasizes the fact that there are many fundamental questions we don’t know about driving," Clegg says.
Driving is a prime example of sequential learning, says Clegg, who has collaborated on driving instruction research with Professor John Groeger of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Research suggests the way the brain represents sequences changes between the initial acquisition of a skill and later performance of that skill.
"Some skills in driving must be learned independently," Clegg says. "Parallel parking is not connected to how well you handle a T-junction."
Learning on the spot
A parking garage contains ample evidence of people acquiring new driving skills, Clegg says. Most drivers aren't required to navigate its tight confines on a regular basis and are forced to learn on the spot. Each paint scrape on a wall represents feedback of an error relayed almost instantly to the driver. "Many people don't visit parking garages on a daily basis and must teach themselves how to drive in one."
Drivers are constantly teaching themselves new skills. On average, driving instructors provide information on a major driving hazard only once per lesson, such as avoiding an oncoming truck that's likely to pull into your lane to pass a bicycle.
"You're almost certainly teaching yourself about hazards on the road while you're on the road," Clegg says, adding that the United Kingdom has instituted hazard-preparation tests for drivers.
While driving is cognitively taxing enough, drivers also are required to navigate a maze of roads to reach destinations. Clegg recently conducted an experiment to find out what kind of directional information best benefits drivers: just seeing a map, just hearing directions, or having both provided at the same time.
Real-world driving tested in high-tech simulator
Psychologist Ben Clegg encourages Nik Olsen to step on the virtual gas in the name of research.
Among a cluster of offices and a maze of hallways in the basement of the Clark Building is a driving simulator that Clegg uses to find out how drivers learn and retain directions. Real-world driving in this instance wouldn't work very well because knowledge of directions around town masks participants' learning in the actual experiment.
The simulator is as high-tech as it is odd-looking. Participants take virtual spins in the simulator – the front half of a late-model Saturn sedan with a Ford Escort interior. In front of the car, three floor-to-ceiling screens project images associated with driving – roads, traffic lights, oncoming traffic. Small LCD screens serve as the rear- and side-view mirrors that complete the 360-degree illusion.
Clegg's team found participants who heard directions and saw a map were most successful in completing the simulation. He theorizes that the combination of auditory and visual instructions enabled the mind to build a route with the least cognitive effort, or "cognitive cost," as Clegg calls it.
"Multimedia information improves our ability to develop a cohesive understanding of what we need to do," Clegg says.
Full story originally published in the Spring 2008 Colorado State Magazine.
