How do different ambient temperatures and vehicle speeds affect the cognitive performance of male drivers? Evidence from ERP

Abstract

Objective

Excessive cold or overheating can cause a decline in driver performance and even serious traffic accidents, but the influence mechanism of ambient temperature and vehicle speeds on drivers’ cognitive performance is still unclear. This research developed an easy driving simulator experiment to study driver performance under different ambient temperatures and vehicle speeds.

Method

Simulated driving tasks were performed by 30 male participants at different speeds in low, medium, and high-temperature environments. A behavioral experiment was adopted, and the average reaction time of emergency braking was used as the evaluation index of driver performance.

Results

Both ambient temperature and vehicle speed had a statistically significant relationship with driver’s braking reaction time, and the interaction effect was significant.

Conclusion

Drivers’ cognitive efforts in medium-temperature environments were significantly lower than that at high and low temperatures. Compared with previous studies, this study also monitored differences in the activity of drivers’ brain regions in three ambient temperatures, providing a physiological basis for measuring drivers’ cognitive efforts.

Keywords:

• Ambient temperature
• simulated driving
• driver performance
• event-related potential

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project is supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52075547).