ABSTRACT
The driving stimulation was restricted to the visual, auditory and vibrotactile stimuli provided in the experiments, which might not be comparable to a realistic driving environment. It seemed important to examine if the effects found previously could be reliably obtained under more realistic testing conditions, such as those offered by high-fidelity driving simulators. If the magnitude of the spatial cuing effects reported remained unchanged, then they could be wholly attributed to the exogenous attention-capturing effect of vibrotactile cues. Studies have shown that the presentation of a vibrotactile cue to one side or the other results in a short-lasting shift of attention to the cued direction, and facilitates the processing of stimuli subsequently presented from the cued direction. Several laboratory-based experiments were designed to assess the possibility of using spatially-distributed vibrotactile warning signals to direct a person’s attention to the front or rear. Vibrotactile stimuli were presented via a belt worn around a participant’s waist.
