As information technology is more actively incorporated into automobiles, the role of IVIS(In-Vehicle Infotainment System) is becoming increasingly important as the main medium that provides convenience and entertainment for the drivers. However, usin...
As information technology is more actively incorporated into automobiles, the role of IVIS(In-Vehicle Infotainment System) is becoming increasingly important as the main medium that provides convenience and entertainment for the drivers. However, using the infotainment systems while driving requires task switching between two tasks, as it involves attending to two visual resources simultaneously. We simulated a setting where participants have to drive while interacting with the infotainment system and examined how task difficulty and motor cues impact driver’s task-switching and driving performance, specifically whether the effect of motor cues differ depending on the task difficulty. For the infotainment display, we used two types of number array depending on the congruency between the digit repetition and the chunking unit, while task difficulty was manipulated by the size of the touch-keys. Participants were instructed to dial two numbers on the screen while we recorded the dialing time, lateral position, inter-key press intervals, and steering wheel control. We found that dialing time and lateral position was affected by task difficulty, while the type of number array had no effect. However, the inter–key press intervals between chunked numbers and the steering wheel movement both increased when participants had to dial an incongruent number array, which indicates that if number digits are repeated, chunking is ignored by the drivers. Our findings indicate that in a dual-task condition, motor cues offset the effect of chunking and that motor cues can effectively signal the timing for task switching.