Influence of conversational contents on driving behaviors

Abstract

Lack of attention is one of the causes of traffic accidents. Mental workload brings about a decline of the attention. A conversation is a kind of a mental workload and many researches have been conducted. We clarify the influence of the contents of the conversations on the driving behavior by classifying and quantifying the contents. Short question are utilized as the conversation because it is difficult to deal with the contents of long sentences. Contents of the conversations are classified into two large groups of meaningful questions and meaningless questions for each subject. First, we measure eye movements using an EEG while subjects listen to the questions. Second, we investigate the driving behaviors while they listen to the questions. There are correlations between the alpha wave and the eye movements while they listen to the questions. Moreover, there are correlations between the driving behaviors and the eye movements.