Publications by authors named "Kristina Stojmenova"

Autonomous vehicles are expected to take complete control of the driving process, enabling the former drivers to act as passengers only. This could lead to increased sickness as they can be engaged in tasks other than driving. Adopting different sickness mitigation techniques gives us unique types of motion sickness in autonomous vehicles to be studied.

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Deficits in attentional and executive functioning may interfere with driving ability and result in a lower level of fitness to drive. Studies show mixed results in relation to the consistency of neuropsychological and driving simulator assessment. The objective of this study was to investigate the consistency of both types of assessment.

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To identify driving characteristics of fit-, unfit-, and conditionally fit-to-drive neurological patient populations using a driving simulator with three high-risk scenarios comprising rural, highway, and urban environments. The study included 91 neurological patients undergoing a multidisciplinary assessment for driver's license revalidation, consisting of a clinical, neuropsychological, functional, and on-road evaluation. The groups drove through three independent driving scenarios, during which a variety of measures describing reaction time, vehicular control, and traffic rule compliance were performed.

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In the era of technological advances and innovations in transportation technologies, application of driving simulators for the investigation and assessment of the driving process provides a safe and suitable testing environment. Although driving simulators are crucial for further improvements in transportation, it is important to resolve one of their main disadvantages-simulator sickness. Therefore, suitable methods for the assessment of simulator sickness are required.

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Objectives: There are 3 standardized versions of the Detection Response Task (DRT), 2 using visual stimuli (remote DRT and head-mounted DRT) and one using tactile stimuli. In this article, we present a study that proposes and validates a type of auditory signal to be used as DRT stimulus and evaluate the proposed auditory version of this method by comparing it with the standardized visual and tactile version.

Methods: This was a within-subject design study performed in a driving simulator with 24 participants.

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The Detection-Response Task is a method for assessing the attentional effects of cognitive load in a driving environment. Drivers are presented with a sensory stimulus every 3-5 s, and are asked to respond to it by pressing a button attached to their finger. Response times and hit rates are interpreted as indicators of the attentional effect of cognitive load.

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This paper presents a driving simulator study in which we investigated whether the Eye Tribe eye tracker (ET) is capable of assessing changes in the cognitive load of drivers through oculography and pupillometry. In the study, participants were asked to drive a simulated vehicle and simultaneously perform a set of secondary tasks with different cognitive complexity levels. We measured changes in eye properties, such as the pupil size, blink rate and fixation time.

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Objectives: The detection response task (DRT) is a method for measuring attentional effects of secondary tasks on a driver's cognitive load by measuring response times and hit rates to different types of stimuli as indirect indicators of increased cognitive load. ISO 17488 (International Organization for Standardization 2016) only provides guidelines for the technical implementation and measurement methods for the visual and tactile versions (use of visual and tactile stimuli) of the DRT method. This article presents a study with the goal of finding the most appropriate auditory stimulus for the implementation of an auditory version of the DRT method.

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Objectives: In this article, we evaluate the sensitivity to cognitive load of 3 versions of the Detection Response Task method (DRT), proposed in ISO Draft Standard DIS-17488.

Methods: We present a user study with 30 participants in which we compared the sensitivity to cognitive load of visual, audio, and tactile DRT in a simulated driving environment. The amount of cognitive load was manipulated with secondary n-back tasks at 2 levels of difficulty (0-back and 1-back).

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