A cross-cultural comparison of drivers’ visual attentionTools Miller, Karl. A. (2024) A cross-cultural comparison of drivers’ visual attention. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
AbstractDriving is a highly visual task and understanding where drivers look is of paramount importance to road safety. Previous research into drivers’ visual attention has shown the typical scan path of drivers, as well as differences in visual search across different levels of experience and different road types. Whilst these findings are helpful in understanding some causes for different fatality rates between novice and experienced drivers, the research has been carried out in Western countries where driving is relatively safe. As such, little is known about visual attention amongst drivers in developing countries, where the majority of the worlds’ road-related fatalities occur. However, cross-cultural research has demonstrated differences in visual search between Westerners and East Asians such that East Asians have a more global and holistic style of attention. This thesis explores whether these differences are also present in driving tasks by comparing visual attention between drivers from the UK and Malaysia. A series of studies were conducted using different measures of attention including self-reported looking choices, change blindness, and eye tracking. Overall, the results suggest that several aspects of visual attention are universal between drivers and are not affected by culture, however when the demands of the driving task are reduced, and participants are free to allocate their attention in a controlled manner cross-cultural differences begin to emerge. It is believed that these differences come about as a result of prolonged exposure to visually cluttered environments such as the Malaysian roadway. As well as expanding the literature in both transport and cross-cultural psychology, these findings have several potential implications which could lead to improvements in road safety.
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