This thesis explores the relationship between subjective risk when
driving and drivers' subsequent memory for everyday driving situations.
Relationships are considered in the context of the wider literature on arousal
and memory. In the first study subjects drove a set route around Cambridge
giving verbal risk ratings; they then performed an unexpected free recall task.
Drivers tended to recall situations which they had previously rated as risky.
A series of laboratory studies explored this result. In these studies subjects
watched films of actual driving situations in a simulator and were given
subsequent recognition tests. In the first laboratory study subjective risk was
only associated with improved recognition sensitivity for the most potentially
dangerous situations. In generally safe situations feelings of risk appeared to
impair recognition. These results were replicated in two further laboratory
studies using different judgment tasks and stimuli. These results could be
explained by subjective risk causing the focusing of attention in driving with
a consequent enhancement of memory for central details at the expense of
memory for peripheral details.
To directly test the attention focusing hypothesis a laboratory study
defined central information with respect to risk in driving situations. Then
an on-road study found that drivers did indeed recall more central details
than would be expected from risky situations. There thus appear to be two
relationships between subjective risk and memory in driving. The first is an
overall tendency for subjects to recall risky situations. This is assumed to be
largely because such events are rare and distinctive. The second is a
tendency for subjects to recall central details of risky situations at the expense of peripheral details. This is consistent with recent studies on
attention focusing in eyewitness testimony. Some implications of these
results for eyewitness testimony and for the psychology of driving are
considered