Inattentional Blindness in a Simulated Driving Task

The visual attention failure of inattentional blindness (IB) frequently occurs for visual information that is relevant and detectable, regardless of whether the unexpected event is congruent or incongruent within the task context. In the context of driving, an occurrence of IB has been associated with deadly collisions as well as significant property damage. For example, in 2008, drivers traveling the wrong way on clearly marked one-way roads caused 747 fatal traffic crashes. Many of these were directly attributable to inattentional blindness. Previous research focused on IB using secondary tasks such as billboards, signage, or bicyclists. The current study explored IB occurrence with stimuli that were directly relevant and critical to primary task performance. The goal of this research study was to investigate variation of inattentional blindness occurrences for a task-relevant stimulus through the manipulation of cognitive load using traffic density. The experimental task required participants to follow a series of auditory directives in a simulated driving environment to reach a destination. The final directive instructed participants to turn left at an intersection clearly marked with a "no left turn" sign. Although the cognitive load manipulation was not successful, 77.6% (59 of 76) of the total number of participants in this study failed to detect the "no-left turn" road sign. This was a significantly stronger IB effect in comparison to similar prior research. These results suggest the need for further investigation on the role of IB on task relevant stimuli.