Individual differences in effects of secondary cognitive activity during driving on temperature at the nose tip

Several researches have pointed out that the temperature at the nose tip is possibly effective for evaluating driver mental condition. In order to establish methods for driver monitoring, whether a method should be adapted to each person or not is an important question. This paper investigates individual differences in effects of performing a cognitively distracting subtask during driving on the temperature at the nose tip. Using a fixed-base driving simulator, we collected the data for five persons. The results show that it is commonly observed the decrease of the temperature when a participant performs the secondary task as the previous researches have pointed out. The difference in the slope of the decrease was small among the participants. However, the amount of the decrease differed from participant to participant. The timings of starting the decrease and the recovery were also person-dependent.