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Electric vehicles (EVs) are quickly replacing internal combustion cars, which will soon become obsolete. Nonetheless, how drivers' perception and cognition deal with certain features of EVs remains largely unknown. In this study we focus on the role of in-car sound, specifically the artificial engine sounds, on drivers' speed perception and control. Previous studies indicate that removing or reducing engine sound leads drivers to underestimate speed and, consequently, to drive faster. Furthermore, evidence suggests that specific sound frequencies could play a role in this process, highlighting the importance of in-car sound features. We consider benefits and limitations of different research paradigms used in the field (mostly video based technique and driving simulation) and we propose an experimental protocol to systematically investigate the phenomenon. Finally, we suggest that the wider use of psychophysical methods on video recordings would benefit the research in the field and overcome some limitations of simulation studies.

Previous studies showed that the sequential verification of different sensory modality properties for concepts (e.g.,BLENDER-loud; BANANA-yellow) incurs a processing cost, known as the modality-switch effect (Pecher et al. 2003; 2004).We assessed the influence of the mode of presentation of stimuli on the modality-switch effect in a property verification primingparadigm. Participants were required to perform a property verification task on a target sentence (e.g., “butter is yellowish”,“leaves rustle”) presented either visually or aurally after having been presented with a prime sentence (e.g., “the light is flick-ering”, “the sound is echoing”) that could either share both, one or none of the target’s mode of presentation and contentmodality. Results showed that the presentation and the content-driven effects were not cumulative. We conclude that the MSEis a two-fold effect which can occur at two different levels of information processing (i.e., perceptual and semantic).