Sensitivity of a Voluntary Interruption of Occlusion Measure to Cognitive Distraction During a Pedal Tracking Task

Abstract

We conducted an experiment with 16 participants to investigate the effect of cognitive distraction on performance of a 1-D tracking task that simulated gap control in driving. Participants operated the tracking task with a foot pedal while performing a secondary task (an auditorily presented N-back task) under eight conditions involving all possible (2x2x2) combinations of degree of secondary task difficulty (1-back vs. 2-back), pedal tracking difficulty (hard vs. easy amounts of lag) and presence vs. absence of visual occlusion. In conditions involving occlusion participants could press a button to get rid of the occlusion for a short period of time, i.e., they used Voluntary Interruption of Occlusion (VIO). Our results showed that use of VIO is associated with updating ability and that it trades off against pedal tracking performance. We also found evidence that cognitive distraction due to the impact of updating requirements in the secondary N-Back task affects performance on the primary, pedal tracking, task.