Effects of anxiety and personality on driving: eye tracking of expert and novice drivers

• Grant number: 16/14125-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: November 01, 2016
• End date: February 28, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Schor
• Grantee: Gisele Chiozi Gotardi
• Supervisor: Geert Savelsbergh
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University Amsterdam (VU), Netherlands
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/10851-3 - Effects of anxiety and personality on the driving: eye tracking of expert and novice drivers, BP.MS

Abstract

The visual exploration in driving is specific to obtain useful information of the environment. Expert drivers perform more efficient visual exploration than novice drivers. According to attentional control theory, anxiety disrupts the balance in the attentional control process affecting the visual exploration and the performance in the task. However, the anxiety effects on performance task differ according to personality. The theory of reinvestment proposes that under high anxiety conditions, high-reinvesters tend to reinvest more knowledge to perform the task, failing more than low-reinvesters. The goal of the current study is to investigate the effects of anxiety and reinvestment on the visual exploration and performance of expert and novice drivers during a simulation driving task. Forty drivers: ten novice drivers low reinvesters, ten novice drivers high reinvesters, ten expert drivers low reinvesters, ten expert drivers high reinvesters, will drive for ten minutes in a simulator under conditions: low anxiety, performing in a quiet environment; high anxiety, performance evaluation, in the presence of a participatory audience and sounds of traffic and horn. In order to analyze the eye data, Areas of Interest (AI) will be determined: internal panel of car, road and the rearview. The dependents variables will be: number and dwell time of fixations in each AI, location and duration of fixations, spread horizontal and vertical of gaze, mean and standard deviation of deviations in the speed and the car heading. (AU)