Attentional disengagement and reengagement is critical in automated driving, where drivers may need to move attention to and from the dynamic driving task. This study investigates the application of the gap effect to attention in the context of automated driving. A previous SaferSim research project (Gaspar & Shull, 2019) showed that it was possible to produce the gap effect in automated driving by extinguishing a secondary task display 300ms prior to a takeover request. However, these faster look up times in the gap condition resulted in a detrimental impact in terms of subsequent takeover performance and response time. The goal of this proposal is to investigate the gap effect in the context of conditionally automated driving for younger and older adults.
