Potential of subliminal information displays to change drivers’ behavior

In the long history of subliminal messages and perception many contradictory results were presented. One group of researchers suggest that subliminal interaction techniques improve human-computer interaction by reducing workload undertaken by sensory channels, but there are also others that have found that subliminal perception does not work. In this article we want to abandon this prejudice by defining first a terminology and introducing a theoretical taxonomy of mental processing states, reviewing and discussing then the potential of subliminal approaches for different sensory channels, and finally recapping the findings from our studies on subliminally triggered behavior change. Our objective is to mitigate driving problems caused by excessive information, therefore the focus of this work is on subliminal techniques applied to driver-vehicle interaction to induce a non-conscious behavioral change in drivers. Supported by the related work survey identifying the application potential of subliminal cues in driving, we designed and run user experiments assessing its applicability in real-world situations. One study evaluates whether subtle (subliminal) vibrations could influence the economy of driving, in another study drivers were exposed to very quickly ashed visual stimuli to assess the potential to affect steering behavior. Our results suggest that subliminal approaches are indeed feasible to provide the driver with added information for driving support without dissipating attention (...)