Abstract

Dashboard-mounted touchscreen tablets are now common in vehicles. Screen/phone use in cars likely shifts drivers’ attention away from the road and contributes to risk of accidents. Nevertheless, vision is subject to multisensory influences from other senses. Haptics may help maintain or even increase visual attention to the road, while still allowing for reliable dashboard control. Here, we provide a proof-of-concept for the effectiveness of digital haptic technologies (hereafter digital haptics), which use ultrasonic vibrations on a tablet screen to render haptic perceptions. Healthy human participants (N = 25) completed a divided-attention paradigm. The primary task was a centrally-presented visual conjunction search task, and the secondary task entailed control of laterally-presented sliders on the tablet. Sliders were presented visually, haptically, or visuo-haptically and were vertical, horizontal or circular. We reasoned that the primary task would be performed best when the secondary task was haptic-only. Reaction times (RTs) on the visual search task were fastest when the tablet task was haptic-only. This was not due to a speed-accuracy trade-off; there was no evidence for modulation of VST accuracy according to modality of the tablet task. These results provide the first quantitative support for introducing digital haptics into vehicle and similar contexts.

Details

Title
Digital haptics improve speed of visual search performance in a dual-task setting
Author
Tivadar, Ruxandra I. 1 ; Arnold, Rebecca C. 2 ; Turoman, Nora 3 ; Knebel, Jean-François 4 ; Murray, Micah M. 5 

 Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8515.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 0423 4662); Fondation Asile des Aveugles and University of Lausanne, Department of Ophthalmology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.428685.5) (ISNI:0000 0004 0627 5427); University of Bern, Cognitive Computational Neuroscience Group, Institute of Computer Science, Bern, Switzerland (GRID:grid.5734.5) (ISNI:0000 0001 0726 5157) 
 Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8515.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 0423 4662) 
 Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8515.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 0423 4662); University of Geneva, Working Memory, Cognition and Development Lab, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Geneva, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8591.5) (ISNI:0000 0001 2322 4988) 
 Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8515.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 0423 4662); CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.433220.4) (ISNI:0000 0004 0390 8241) 
 Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, The LINE (Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology), Department of Radiology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.8515.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 0423 4662); Fondation Asile des Aveugles and University of Lausanne, Department of Ophthalmology, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.428685.5) (ISNI:0000 0004 0627 5427); CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne, Switzerland (GRID:grid.433220.4) (ISNI:0000 0004 0390 8241); The Sense Innovation and Research Center, Lausanne and Sion, Switzerland (GRID:grid.433220.4) 
Publication year
2022
Publication date
2022
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2677227158
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2022. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.