Inattentional Blindness in Expert Drivers

A failure to detect an obvious, but unexpected object when attention is engaged elsewhere, is known as Inattentional Blindness (IB) (Mack & Rock, 1998), and in driving tasks, can be an indication of situation awareness and hazard detection. In this study we used a static, driving-related IB paradigm to investigate how experts allocate attention and filter information when driving. We demonstrated that expert drivers were better than non-expert drivers in selectively filtering important and unimportant information in driving scenarios. The results are central in understanding how expert drivers allocate attention when driving, and have implications for driver training programs.