Suppressed articulatory rehearsal mechanism and driving errors

Abstract

Drivers get driving related information mainly through visual, auditory, and haptic sensory channels but it is predominantly based on the information received through visual senses. In working memory visual information fades away faster than the auditory information and in order to retain the visual information for a longer duration it gets recoded into phonological information through Articulatory Rehearsal Mechanism (ARM) [1]. After every 2 s, ARM recites and rehearses the phonological information making it to re-enter into the phonological store, where it starts to decay again immediately [1, 2]. Individuals when engaged in processing visual information in order to perform driving and if there is suppression of ARM chances are high that visual information processing will be compromised. This distraction is ought to suppress the visual information from being rehearsed and remembered acoustically. The present study investigates the effect of suppression of ARM on driving performance in terms of driving errors. 30 drivers voluntarily participated in the study. They drove an instrumented vehicle and were required to follow certain directions displayed on signboards. The signboards were installed along a two-lane track. Drivers were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions of suppression of ARM namely non-suppression, simple suppression, and complex suppression. Driving errors were analyzed in terms of slips and lapses. The results indicate that there are significantly more driving errors under complex suppression as compared to other two conditions of suppression (i.e., non-suppression and simple suppression). Further analysis reveals that there are significantly more cases of slips than lapses. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.