Motion Sickness, Motivation, Workload and Task Performance in Automated Vehicles

Previous literature has reported moderate losses in performance on cognitive tasks in the presence of mild motion sickness and concluded that motion sickness likely affected task motivation. These studies have used simple fundamental cognitive tasks, unlike the activities users of automated vehicles are expected to engage in. In this study we used a reading comprehension task with ecological relevance to automated driving. The study had a 2x2 withinsubjects factorial design. The factors were the presence or the absence of motion and task incentive. We found no effect of motion nor incentive on task performance. We did however find a significant effect of motion sickness on subjective workload. This may mean that under more naturalistic conditions motion sickness may lead to task avoidance, which is of importance to the utility and acceptance of automated vehicles