Influence of Auditory Information on Drivers’ Abilities to Extrapolate Motion of a Lead Vehicle in a Traffic Environment
| dc.contributor.advisor | DeLucia, Patricia | en_US |
| dc.creator | Petersen, Christine Marie | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-05-29T19:58:25Z | en_US |
| dc.date.available | 2025-05-29T19:58:25Z | en_US |
| dc.date.created | 2025-05 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-04-16 | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2025 | en_US |
| dc.date.updated | 2025-05-29T19:58:26Z | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Nearly 29 percent of all traffic collisions between two vehicles on the road are rear-end collisions, primarily caused by shortened headway. This shortened headway could be attributed to a driver’s inability to accurately extrapolate motion. Components of music, such as tempo, may affect drivers' abilities to extrapolate motion, but it has not yet been studied. This is important to understand, as about 70% of Americans listen to music while driving. Therefore, the current research aimed to understand whether music, specifically the tempo, affects drivers' abilities to extrapolate motion. Drivers watched simulated car-following scenes and either heard no sound or a sound with a slow or fast tempo. After an interruption, the scene reappeared with the lead vehicle at the correct position or at a more or less advanced position. Drivers reported whether the lead vehicle reappeared at the correct position. The first experiment examined if drivers' abilities to extrapolate motion during a 777 ms interruption varied based on the type of sound played while the driver drove the same speed, faster, or slower than the lead vehicle (i.e., relative velocity). The second experiment examined if the timing of sound (played during the entire scene including the interruption, only before the interruption, or only during the interruption) influenced motion extrapolation and whether a 3.2 s interruption duration affected drivers' reappearance judgments when the driver drove faster than the lead vehicle. Motion extrapolation at an interruption of 777 ms was based only on the relative velocity of the vehicles in the scene. The effect of tempo was not significant. When the interruption was 3.2 s, the tempo influenced drivers' abilities to extrapolate motion. Specifically, judgments were more biased towards advanced reappearance positions at a faster tempo compared to a slower tempo. When the interruption duration was 3.2 s but not 777 ms, drivers relied on the auditory stimuli, resulting in a greater difference in reappearance judgments among sound conditions. Thus, auditory information can affect drivers' abilities to extrapolate motion, but only at relatively longer interruptions. | en_US |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/118435 | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject | Traffic Safety | en_US |
| dc.subject | Perception | en_US |
| dc.subject | Human Factors | en_US |
| dc.title | Influence of Auditory Information on Drivers’ Abilities to Extrapolate Motion of a Lead Vehicle in a Traffic Environment | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
| dc.type.material | Text | en_US |
| thesis.degree.department | Psychology | en_US |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction | en_US |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Rice University | en_US |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | en_US |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy | en_US |
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