The influence of anxiety on visual entropy of experienced drivers

This study tested the use of entropy to identify changes on behavior of drivers under pressure. Sixteen experienced drivers drove in a simulator wearing a head-mounted eye tracker under low- and high-anxiety conditions. Anxiety was induced by manipulating some psychological factors such as peer-pressure. Fixations transitions between AOIs (lane, speedometer and mirrors) were calculated through first-order transition matrix, transformed to Markov probability matrix and adjusted into the entropy equation. Drivers showed greater state-anxiety scores and higher mean heart rates following manipulation. Under anxiety, drivers showed higher visual entropy, indicating a more random scanning. The randomness implies into a poorer acquisition of information and may indicate an impaired top-down control of attention provoked by anxiety

Driver glance behaviors and scanning patterns: Applying static and dynamic glance measures to the analysis of curve driving with secondary tasks

Performing secondary tasks (or non‐driving‐related tasks) while driving on curved roads may be risky and unsafe. The purpose of this study was to explore whether driving safety in situations involving curved roads and secondary tasks can be evaluated using multiple measures of eye movement. We adopted Markov‐based transition algorithms (i.e., transition/stationary probabilities, entropy) to quantify drivers’ dynamic eye movement patterns, in addition to typical static visual measures, such as frequency and duration of glances. The algorithms were evaluated with data from an experiment (Jeong & Liu, 2019) involving multiple road curvatures and stimulus‐response secondary task types. Drivers were more likely to scan only a few areas of interest with a long duration in sharper curves. Total head‐down glance time was longer in less sharp curves in the experiment, but the probability of head‐down glances was higher in sharper curves over the long run. The number of reliable transitions between areas of interest varied with the secondary task type. The visual scanning patterns for visually undemanding tasks were as random as those for visually demanding tasks. Markov‐based measures of dynamic eye movements provided insights to better understand drivers’ underlying mental processes and scanning strategies, compared with typical static measures. The presented methods and results can be useful for in‐vehicle systems design and for further analysis of visual scanning patterns in the transportation domain.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151975/1/hfm20798_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151975/2/hfm20798.pd

Quantifying the predictability of visual scanpaths using active information storage

Entropy-based measures are an important tool for studying human gaze behavior under various conditions. In particular, gaze transition entropy (GTE) is a popular method to quantify the predictability of fixation transitions. However, GTE does not account for temporal dependencies beyond two consecutive fixations and may thus underestimate a scanpath's actual predictability. Instead, we propose to quantify scanpath predictability by estimating the active information storage (AIS), which can account for dependencies spanning multiple fixations. AIS is calculated as the mutual information between a processes' multivariate past state and its next value. It is thus able to measure how much information a sequence of past fixations provides about the next fixation, hence covering a longer temporal horizon. Applying the proposed approach, we were able to distinguish between induced observer states based on estimated AIS, providing first evidence that AIS may be used in the inference of user states to improve human-machine interaction.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Providing and assessing intelligible explanations in autonomous driving

Intelligent vehicles with automated driving functionalities provide many benefits, but also instigate serious concerns around human safety and trust. While the automotive industry has devoted enormous resources to realising vehicle autonomy, there exist uncertainties as to whether the technology would be widely adopted by society. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are complex systems, and in challenging driving scenarios, they are likely to make decisions that could be confusing to end-users. As a way to bridge the gap between this technology and end-users, the provision of explanations is generally being put forward. While explanations are considered to be helpful, this thesis argues that explanations must also be intelligible (as obligated by the GDPR Article 12) to the intended stakeholders, and should make causal attributions in order to foster confidence and trust in end-users. Moreover, the methods for generating these explanations should be transparent for easy audit. To substantiate this argument, the thesis proceeds in four steps: First, we adopted a mixed method approach (in a user study $N=101$) to elicit passengers' requirements for effective explainability in diverse autonomous driving scenarios. Second, we explored different representations, data structures and driving data annotation schemes to facilitate intelligible explanation generation and general explainability research in autonomous driving. Third, we developed transparent algorithms for posthoc explanation generation. These algorithms were tested within a collision risk assessment case study and an AV navigation case study, using the Lyft Level5 dataset and our new SAX dataset---a dataset that we have introduced for AV explainability research. Fourth, we deployed these algorithms in an immersive physical simulation environment and assessed (in a lab study $N=39$) the impact of the generated explanations on passengers' perceived safety while varying the prediction accuracy of an AV's perception system and the specificity of the explanations. The thesis concludes by providing recommendations needed for the realisation of more effective explainable autonomous driving, and provides a future research agenda

The effects of task difficulty on gaze behaviour during landing with visual flight rules in low-time pilots

Eye movements have been used to examine the cognitive function of pilots and understand how information processing abilities impact performance. Traditional and advanced measures of gaze behaviour effectively reflect changes in cognitive load, situational awareness, and expert-novice differences. However, the extent to which gaze behaviour changes during the early stages of skill development has yet to be addressed. The current study investigated the impact of task difficulty on gaze behaviour in low-time pilots (N=18) while they completed simulated landing scenarios. An increase in task difficulty resulted in longer fixation of the runway, and a reduction in the stationary gaze entropy (gaze dispersion) and gaze transition entropy (sequence complexity). These findings suggest that pilots’ gaze became less complex and more focused on fewer areas of interest when task difficulty increased. Additionally, a novel approach to identify and track instances when pilots restrict their attention outside the cockpit (i.e., gaze tunneling) was explored and shown to be sensitive to changes in task difficulty. Altogether, the gaze-related metrics used in the present study provide valuable information for assessing pilots gaze behaviour and help further understand how gaze contributes to better performance in low-time pilots

Supporting arts and enterprise skills in communities through creative engagement with the local area

The project proposes a framework and methodology of artistic and creative social intervention that empowers and supports engagement with communities of young people affected by change in their local environment. This is a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Knowledge Transfer Fellowship aimed at building new and innovative models of creative community engagement and collaboration. The project supports active citizenship among young people by facilitating social capacity building through enterprise structures and transferring the creative lead in socially responsive arts projects to those in need of empowerment. The initial action research project is utilising an arts and enterprise participation model to create self-branded commodities that will give a role to young people within a wider, community driven, gun crime reduction and social cohesion programme. The model seeks to sustain the commitment of those participating by focussing on metrics and benchmarks that young people in the project can own and influence. The blend of creative agendas and enterprise goals provides a breadth of purpose and opportunity, linking outputs to specific environmental and social impacts. The project evidences the role and function of arts media in multi-strand learning and participation projects. As educational policy and practice (14+ age range) in the UK moves more towards action based learning for transferable life skills, the project provides a methodology emphatic of team and collaborative process, individual responsibility and creativity. The process develops ownership and shared responsibility in relation to community initiatives; fostering fresh creativity and a diversity of approach in the exploration of social, physical and racial issues arising from economic disadvantage. The knowledge transfer process is targeting a toolkit relating to multi-agency project working, creative research and action learning, empowerment and applied social arts practices

Psychologically-Based and Content-Oriented Experience in Entertainment Virtual Environments

In daily life, rich experiences evolve in every environmental and social interaction. Because experience has a strong impact on how people behave, scholars in different fields are interested in understanding what constitutes an experience. Yet even if interest in conscious experience is on the increase, there is no consensus on how such experience should be studied. Whatever approach is taken, the subjective and psychologically multidimensional nature of experience should be respected. This study endeavours to understand and evaluate conscious experiences. First I intro-duce a theoretical approach to psychologically-based and content-oriented experience. In the experiential cycle presented here, classical psychology and orienting-environmental content are connected. This generic approach is applicable to any human-environment interaction. Here I apply the approach to entertainment virtual environments (VEs) such as digital games and develop a framework with the potential for studying experiences in VEs. The development of the methodological framework included subjective and objective data from experiences in the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) and with numerous digital games (N=2,414). The final framework consisted of fifteen factor-analytically formed subcomponents of the sense of presence, involvement and flow. Together, these show the multidimensional experiential profile of VEs. The results present general experiential laws of VEs and show that the interface of a VE is related to (physical) presence, which psychologically means attention, perception and the cognitively evaluated realness and spatiality of the VE. The narrative of the VE elicits (social) presence and involvement and affects emotional outcomes. Psychologically, these outcomes are related to social cognition, motivation and emotion. The mechanics of a VE affect the cognitive evaluations and emotional outcomes related to flow. In addition, at the very least, user background, prior experience and use context affect the experiential variation. VEs are part of many peoples lives and many different outcomes are related to them, such as enjoyment, learning and addiction, depending on who is making the evalua-tion. This makes VEs societally important and psychologically fruitful to study. The approach and framework presented here contribute to our understanding of experiences in general and VEs in particular. The research can provide VE developers with a state-of-the art method (www.eveqgp.fi) that can be utilized whenever new product and service concepts are designed, prototyped and tested.Antoisat kokemukset syntyvät toimiessamme vuorovaikutustilanteissa sekä ympäris-tön että muiden ihmisten kanssa. Näin syntyneet kokemukset vaikuttavat käyttäytymi-seemme ja tuleviin toimiimme. Tutkijoita on alkanut kiinnostaa, miten paremmin ym-märtää kokemuksen rakentumista ympäristön vuorovaikutustilanteissa. Vaikka kiinnostus kokemuksellisuuden ymmärtämiseksi on kasvanut, vielä ei ole yksimielisyyttä siitä, miten kokemusta tulisi tutkia. Olipa lähestymistapa mikä tahansa, tulisi aina kunnioittaa kokemuksen subjektiivista ja psykologisesti moniulotteista luonnetta. Tämä tutkimus edesauttaa tietoisen kokemuksen ymmärtämistä ja arvioimista. Ensin esitellään teoreettinen lähestymistapa psykologiseen ja sisällöllisesti suuntautuneeseen kokemukseen, jossa mieli yhdistyy ympäristön sisältöjen kanssa kokemuskehässä. Lä-hestymistapa on melko yleinen ja sitä voidaan soveltaa moniin eri ihmisen ja ympäris-tön vuorovaikutustilanteisiin. Tässä tutkimuksessa lähestymistapaa sovellettiin viihteellisiin virtuaalisiin ympäristöihin (VY), kuten digitaalisiin peleihin, joiden aikaansaamien kokemusten arvioimiseen kehitettiin tutkimusviitekehys. Tutkimusviitekehyksen kehittämiseksi kerättiin sekä subjektiivista että objektiivista aineistoa CAVE:sta ja lukuisista digitaalisista peleistä (N=2414). Lopullinen versio sisälsi viisitoista faktorianalyysillä muodostettua alakomponenttia, joilla mitattiin läsnäolon tunnetta (presence), osallistumista (involvement) ja flow ta. Yhdessä nämä muodostivat moniulotteisen kokemusprofiilin VY:stä. Tulokset osoittivat yleisiä VY:n kokemiseen liittyviä lainalaisuuksia. Käyttöliittymä vaikuttaa (fyysiseen) läsnäolontunteeseen, joka psykologisesti tarkoittaa huomiokykyä, havainnoimista ja kognitiivista arviota VY:n aitoudesta ja spatiaalisuudesta. Tarinallisuus saa aikaan (sosiaalista) läsnäoloa ja osallistumista sekä vaikuttaa tunteisiin. Psykologisesti nämä liittyvät sosiaaliseen kognitioon, motivaatioon ja emootioihin. Mekaniikka vaikuttaa kognitiiviseen arviointiin ja emootioihin, jotka liittyvät flow n kokemiseen. Myös taustamuuttujat, kuten sukupuoli ja aikaisempi kokemus sekä käyttökonteksti vaikuttavat kokemukseen. VY:t ovat iso osa monien ihmisten arkea ja niihin liitetään monenlaisia uskomuksia ja seuraamuksia. Arvioijan tausta ja motiivit vaikuttavat siihen, liitetäänkö VY:öön nautinto, oppiminen vai riippuvuus. Tämän takia VY:n tieteellinen tutkimus on yhteiskunnallisesti tärkeää ja psykologisesti hedelmällistä. Esitetty lähestymistapa ja viitekehys auttavat ymmärtämään kokemuksia yleisesti ja erityisesti VY:ssä. VY:n kehittäjille tutkimus tarjoaa viimeisintä tietämystä edustavan viitekehyksen (www.eveqgp.fi), jota voidaan hyödyntää kun uusia tuote- ja palvelukonsepteja suunnitellaan ja testataan

Rethinking infrastructure design: Evaluating pedestrians and VRUs' psychophysiological and behavioral responses to different roadway designs

The integration of human-centric approaches has gained more attention recently due to more automated systems being introduced into our built environments (buildings, roads, vehicles, etc.), which requires a correct understanding of how humans perceive such systems and respond to them. This paper introduces an Immersive Virtual Environment-based method to evaluate the infrastructure design with psycho-physiological and behavioral responses from the vulnerable road users, especially for pedestrians. A case study of pedestrian mid-block crossings with three crossing infrastructure designs (painted crosswalk, crosswalk with flashing beacons, and a smartphone app for connected vehicles) are tested. Results from 51 participants indicate there are differences between the subjective and objective measurement. A higher subjective safety rating is reported for the flashing beacon design, while the psychophysiological and behavioral data indicate that the flashing beacon and smartphone app are similar in terms of crossing behaviors, eye tracking measurements, and heart rate. In addition, the smartphone app scenario appears to have a lower stress level as indicated by eye tracking data, although many participants don't have prior experience with it. Suggestions are made for the implementation of new technologies, which can increase public acceptance of new technologies and pedestrian safety in the future