Effects of Car Navigation System Monitoring on Driver’s Spatial Tracking and Memory

In the present study, the interactive effect of drivers’ monitoring of in-vehicle navigation system and gender difference on their driving performance and information processing during driving was investigated. The results from the experiment can be summarized as followings: (1) the participants appeared to suffer from additional workload demands required by continuous in-car navigation system monitoring, resulted in slower driving-simulated tracking tasks decreased memory performances. (2) Although gender groups performed the given tasks in almost equivalent levels in the control condition, the female drivers, showed more deteriorated performances in the experimental condition, which was resulted in. significant interaction effect of gender and experimental condition. However, (3) contrast to the result of degraded driving scene recognition, female participants showed higher free recall scores than male participants. The implication and limitation of the present study were discussed.