Effect of Driving Context On Design Dialogue

The automotive sector is currently undergoing dramatic technological and sociological advances which challenge the traditional design process, and which appear to require a more intimate understanding of owner needs and desires. The use of a real-time communication link between designers and the people who are in the automobiles could become a key component of an innovative automobile design process. The research described here consisted of an investigation of the influence of driving context (country road, motorway or city road) on the real-time verbal exchange between a driver and a designer who asked questions about the automobile and driving experience. Twenty university students and staff were recruited for the tests. A psychologically optimized question set was prepared, and was deployed with each participant as the individual drove the simulator on the target road. The research confirmed the dependency on the driving context of both the quantity of exchanged words and their semiotic content

Visual Evoked Potentials Change as Heart Rate and Carotid Pressure Change

The relationship between cardiovascular activity and the brain was explored by recording visual evoked potentials from the occipital regions of the scalp during systolic and diastolic pressure (Experiment I) and during fast and slow heartbeats at systolic and diastolic pressure (Experiment II). Visual evoked potentials changed significantly as heart rate and carotid pressure fluctuated normally, and these changes were markedly different in the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Evoked potentials recorded from the right hemisphere during various cardiac events differed significantly, whereas those recorded from the left did not. In both experiments, differences in the right hemisphere were due primarily to the P1 component, which was larger at diastolic than at systolic pressure. The present findings are consistent with formulations from behavioral studies suggesting that baroreceptor activity can influence sensory intake, and suggest that hemispheric specialization may play an important role in the relationship between cardiac events, the brain and behavior.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73146/1/j.1469-8986.1982.tb02579.x.pd