Two experiments were conducted to assess the effect of display clutter on driver attention allocation for highand low-clutter in-vehicle navigation displays. Participants were asked to respond to navigation queries in a static, presentation-based experiment and a dynamic, driving simulator experiment. Results revealed differential associations between clutter and attention allocation such that stronger correlations were exhibited in the presentation-based experiment. Those measures of display clutter focusing on display features and data (i.e., bottom-up factors) had stronger correlations with attention allocation than measures focusing on user task knowledge or familiarity (i.e., top-down factors). The findings suggest that humans adjust search strategies to account for competing demands of multiple tasks in such a way that any effect of clutter on driver attention is minimized, and that bottom-up influences of clutter have a stronger association with driver attention allocation than top-down influences.
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