An Analysis of Human Error in Skill Task and Visual Recognition under Auditory Interruption - Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1997. 'Computational Cybernetics and Simulation'., 1997 IEEE Intern

When \\e drive a car. rve have to do different kinds of works siniultaneously. and thus \ve are apt to make some errors under such simultaneous ivorks. I n recent years. there have been many dri1w-s who use a cellular phone uliile driving 11 car. And there lkippcn some car accidents that are caused by the use of the cellular phone. This kind of accidents has become one of the social problems today. To use of a hands-free phone is efficient to free the driver from tlie operation of a cellular phone or from looking aside while driving. which may cause an accident. However. there is a critical possibilih for the driver to lose his attention and misjudge. even if he uses a handsfree phone. This might be said to be a kind of a hidden dangerous phenomenon. When a driver communicates with someone by :i phone. he has to do tluee extra works that he does not need to do in a usual driving. One of them is to listen to and to understand the person whom he is talking to. and the second is to think of the answer to h i . and the third is to talk to him. Iiii our research experiment we have set an experimental environment consisting of tluee tasks on a computer screen to quantitatively analyze mutual effect of these tasks. The first task is a tracking task. wldch is a typical skill base one. The second task is to recognize the visual information that is indicated by four different media on a computer screen and to respond as soon as possible. The third task is to listen to a conversation and auswer a question about the conversatioii. This task is supposed to be the same as using a cellular phone while driving a car. I n this paper we have exanuned the effect of third task on tlie first and tlie second tasks. There \vas not any effect of the third task on the perforniance of the tracking task. The time needed to respond after getting the information n n s affected a little by tlie third task. The number of o\.erlooking tlie visual information in the second task significantly increased by the effect of the third task. This point might be one of the causes that result in a car accident