The Effect of Music Familiarity on Driving: A Simulated Study of the Impact of Music Familiarity Under Different Driving Conditions

Music is one of the most popular activities while driving. Previous research on music while driving has been mixed, with some researchers finding music to be a distractor and some research finding music to be facilitative to driving performance. The current study was designed to determine if familiarity with the music might explain the difference found between self-selected and experimenter-selected music, and whether the difficulty of the driving conditions affected music’s relationship to driving performance. One hundred and sixty-five University students participated in a driving simulation both with music and without music. Under the “with music” condition, participants were randomly assigned to three music conditions: self-selected music, experimenter-selected familiar music, and experimenter-selected unfamiliar music. In the simulation drive, participants first drove under a simple, low-mental workload condition (car following task in a simulated suburban road) and then drove under a complex, high-mental workload condition (city/urban road). The results showed that whether music was self- or experimenter-selected did not affect driving performance. Whether the music was familiar or unfamiliar did not affect performance either. However, self-selected music appeared to improve driving performance under low-workload conditions, leading to less car-following delay and less standard deviation in steering, but also caused participants to drive faster, leading to faster mean speed and higher car-following modulus, but not more speed limit violations. Self-selected music did not have any significant effect in high-mental workload conditions

Effect of Listening to Music as a Function of Driving Complexity: A Simulator Study on the Differing Effects of Music on Different Driving Tasks

Research in regards to music’s effects on driving performance has been mixed. Previous research has found that music adds to mental workload. Other research has found that high mental workload is related to poorer driving performance in simulation. In this study, mental workload was manipulated by varying visual complexity and type of task (i.e., car-following or braking for unexpected obstacles). It was found that steering variance and delay in carfollowing response were reduced by music under low-workload conditions, while number of collisions with cars and number of lane excursions were increased under high-workload conditions. A practice effect was also found, with participants performing better when listening to music with more practice