This study investigated the distribution of visual attention and driving performance under different conditions of preactivated mental representations. It is propagated that a series of mental concepts is successively activated during driving. Once a concept is activated, reactions to similar objects are facilitated (priming effect). In order to examine to which extent activated concepts influence the behaviour while driving, a driving simulator-study was performed. The difference between the experimental conditions was the existence of a concept-triggering signal: In one version of the traffic scene a premonitory stimulus appeared as a static object (warning sign) and in a second version as a dynamic object (moving pedestrian) before a jaywalker emerged behind a parking bus ...