ABSTRACT
Vehicle manufacturers are currently in the process of developing devices which automatically control the speed, headway, and lateral position of cars. Previous research (Young and Stanton, 1997) has found that mental workload decreases significantly as more levels of automation are introduced. The current paper investigates whether this changes across levels of driver skill. The Southampton Driving Simulator was used to test four skill levels, each with four levels of automation. The data suggest that driver skill has little effect on subjective mental workload. However, a secondary task measure reveals an interaction between skill and automation, with distinct patterns of attentional demand observed at extreme levels of each variable. These results are interpreted in the light of research on automaticity.
