Abstract
This thesis investigates visually guided actions of urban traffic users, specifically drivers and cyclists, through different theoretical frameworks. It is divided into two parts, each employing distinct guides to discovery.
Part 1: The focus is on drivers' gaze behaviour during virtual navigation grounded in cognitivist approaches. Three experiments investigate the relationship between visual attention and driving performance among vulnerable driver groups. Study 1 explores the impact of anxiety on attention and performance in driving, revealing that while anxiety impairs processing efficiency and performance effectiveness for both inexperienced and experienced drivers, it shows that attentional shifts differ based on experience level. Study 2 investigates how race gaming experience influences gaze behaviour and driving performance, showing that drivers with gaming experience allocate more attention to task-relevant source of information, highlighting how virtual experience can be used as good training for enhancing gaze behaviour and driving performance. Study 3 examines gaze behaviour and driving performance among drivers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy older and younger adults, finding that PD affects performance and gaze behaviour negatively. PD drivers had more collisions and spent less time within the speed zone. Their gaze behaviour was more random, with increased fixations on irrelevant areas and higher visual entropy. Older drivers concentrated their visual search on the lane to detect threats.
Part 2: I shift my guide to discovery to the ecological concept of affordances, investigating the role of perceiving affordances in movement control. Study 4 investigates whether the visual control of braking in cycling is affordance-based. Maximum achievable deceleration was manipulated by adding weights to the bike, and two approach distances are used to vary speed. Participants increased brake adjustments as they approached the action boundary, indicating an affordance-based control strategy. Active cyclists predominantly used the aggressive style, suggesting experience influences braking strategies. Finally, Study 5 explores action scaling in braking relative to preferred and maximum deceleration in cycling on different terrain slopes. Participants began braking earlier with lower deceleration on the downhill slope. Aggressive braking style was more prevalent during the uphill than the downhill slope. Both styles adjust braking magnitude as deceleration increases, supporting the affordance-based approach.
In summary, this thesis advances our understanding of visually guided actions in urban traffic through the study of different theoretical frameworks. Due to its greater ecological representativity and more parsimonious explanation, the affordance-based control approach emerges as the most appropriate perspective for investigating visual perception-action coupling in traffic navigation.
Original language | English |
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Qualification | PhD |
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Award date | 18 Dec 2024 |
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Publication status | Published - 18 Dec 2024 |
Keywords
- Visually guided actions
- Affordances
- Driving
- Cycling
- Perception-action coupling