Cognitive Distraction

“Cognitive Distraction While Multitasking in the Automobile.” by David L. Strayer, Jason M. Watson, and Frank A. Drews, The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 54, Burlington: Academic Press, 2011, pp. 29-58.

Two major claims from David Strayer et al. (2011) research were that the distraction and interference of cell phone usage while driving is not something that can be developed overtime through practice and that there are certain individuals, which they identify as supertaskers, who are inherently better at performing the multitasking necessary to use a cell phone will driving. Strayer et al. (2011) identified two groups of cell phone users: novices that never use their phone while driving and expert users who reported using their cell phone over 40% of the time while driving. They tested these two groups in a single task and dual task conditions in both the city and highway environments. The results of their study demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the impairment caused by cell phone usage between the two groups and that both groups experienced substantial deficiencies in the dual task scenario. Additionally, they implemented a driving simulator to evaluate if the cell phone multitasking would develop and improve over a period of 4 days with the same event occurrences. The results of the study confirmed that the number of collisions that occurred over the course of 4 days did lower substantially. However, the dual task scenario still had twice the number of collisions. Furthermore, during the testing of a novel simulated scenario over a 4-day period the results showed that the number of collisions on the final day of testing were very similar to first day of testing.

Strayer et al. (2011) conducted several studies to assess if impaired driving ability while using a cell phone was ubiquitous among all individuals. They employed a cognitive approach utilizing an auditory version of the Operation Span (OPSAN) task and fMRI techniques to testing users while driving. The results of the study showed that was a very small subset of users which they termed “supertaskers” that showed no decline in driving impairment while tested on the OSPAN task. To further investigate this phenomenon and asses the differences of brain activity in supertaskers, they utilized fMRI scanning techniques to discover the difference in activity in the prefrontal cortex and which brain regions are most affected by multitasking behavior. The results of the fMRI study showed that the frontopolor prefrontal cortex, desorolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex show less activity during multitasking scenarios which proposes that supertaskers use fewer brain resources and working memory capacity while performing multitasking activities.

I believe both the studies concerned with testing if cell phone multitasking can be improved upon effectively demonstrate that the several variables involved with cell phone communication while driving is not a skill that can be developed overtime. However, it would be interesting to test the new interfaces (e.g. Bluetooth and touch screen) to see how this improve the impairment of drivers compared to normal cellphone usage.  I also believe that their rigorous testing and analysis of the individual differences in attention span and multitasking ability successfully exhibited that a subset of ‘supertaskers’ does exist that have an intrinsic ability to multitask more efficiently than other individuals. Furthermore, the cognitive neuroscience approach and research methods they employed to assess and evaluate individual differences in multitasking capabilities was really interesting. Especially, how the implemented fMRI techniques to identify the differences of the several brain regions of supertaskers and to discover the specfic areas of the brain that were affected by multitasking behavior.