Subject: [NEXTEL-1] MORE COMPLICATED MENTAL TASKS INTERFERE WITH DRIVER

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 20:19:37 -0400

Date: June 29, 2003
Contact: Public Affairs Office
 (202) 336-5700

MORE COMPLICATED MENTAL TASKS INTERFERE WITH
DRIVERS’ ABILITY TO DETECT AND DISCRIMINATE AMONG
VISUAL TARGETS

Spanish study tested actual highway drivers; also showed hands-free phone
conversations to be as safe – or as risky – as talking to a passenger, depending
on the
demands of the conversation

WASHINGTON — Undertaking complex mental tasks can reduce a driver’s ability to
detect visual targets by as much as 30 percent. New research on driving in real
traffic confirms that mental workload can interfere with the capacity to detect
visual targets, discriminate among them, and select a response. Higher-level
mental tasks take attentional resources away from the road, resulting in those
all-too-familiar post-accident reports: “I didn’t expect it” or “I saw it too
late.” These findings appear in the June issue of the Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Applied.

Already knowing that external distractions divert drivers, the authors – at the
Dirección General De Tráfico, Spain’s Public Administration for Traffic Safety and
the Universidad Complutense in Madrid -- studied internal distractions produced by
the driver’s own thoughts or cognitive activity unrelated to the task of driving.
“It is easy to understand how one cannot see because of not looking,” they
explain, “but it is less obvious to explain how one looks but does not see.”

The two-psychologist team studied 12 adults who drove for about four hours on the
highway north from Madrid. They used a standard Citröen with an unobtrusive
eye-tracking system that allowed them to study gaze and ocular fixation for signs
of attention and distraction as drivers performed certain mental tasks. Drivers
were additionally tested by an automatic system that periodically flashed
spotlights in the driver’s visual field, to which drivers responded using buttons
placed ergonomically near the steering wheel. The researchers analyzed how drivers
scanned the road scene, including use of the speedometer and mirrors. Researchers
also measured how often the drivers glanced at the flashing spotlights, to
identify them before they responded.
The effects of the performance of several mental tasks were compared with the
effects of ordinary driving (the control condition). After being asked to attend
and keep the information in mind, drivers listened to recorded audio messages with
either abstract or concrete information (acquisition task). Next, drivers had to
freely generate a reproduction of what they had just listened to (production
task).

Although the more receptive tasks – listening and learning -- had little or no
effect on performance, there were significant differences in almost all of the
measures of attention when drivers had to reproduce the content of the audio
message they had just heard.

Drivers also performed other tasks, either live or by phone. One was mental
calculus (mentally changing between Euros and Spanish pesetas) either with an
experimenter in the car, talking to the driver, or with the driver speaking by
hands-free phone. One was a memory task (giving detailed information about where
they were and what they were doing at a given day and time). Both tasks produced
remarkable distraction effects.

“When performing complex mental tasks,” the authors say, “the percentages of
detected targets and/or correct responses decreased significantly.” Drivers
glanced at the targets less frequently, and gave a higher percentage of responses
without directly looking in their direction. Also during these tasks, the targets
(if looked at) were detected later and glanced at for less time, which would cause
poorer identification.

Say the authors, “Some tasks showed a reduction in detection probability of almost
30 percent with respect to the control condition, something that is practically
meaningful as an estimate of the increased risk of distraction errors
hypothetically leading to traffic conflicts or accidents.”

Driver errors appeared to derive from deficient target perception and/or
identification rather then from a problem with decision rules and/or response
performance. In other words, mentally distracted drivers still know how to drive,
but don’t see things well or fast enough to safely use their skills.

In the experimental variation that examined the impact of hands-free phone
conversation, message complexity made the difference. The relative safety of
low-demand phone conversation -- if hands-free and voice-operated --appeared to be
about the same as that of live conversation. Thus, the authors say that because
they demand too much attention, “Complex conversations, whether by phone or with a
passenger, are dangerous for road safety.” The participants only answered phone
calls; the study did not include dialing.

The authors urge further study to assess the impact of another result, the spatial
gaze concentration accompanied by a marked reduction in the speedometer and
rearview mirror inspection, which “can be interpreted as a reduced situation
awareness but also as an example of a balance to optimize visual resources.”

The results are important, the authors conclude, for “the evaluation of the
potential impact of in-car devices, the improvement of intelligent vehicle-user
interfaces, and the issue of how to present information to drivers with minimal
interference.”
The findings also confirm that the risk of endogenous distraction (internal to the
driver, as in complex thought) is at least as relevant as exogenous distraction
(external, as in a crying child in the back seat or an accident scene on the
road).
The authors stress that because distraction cannot be directly submitted to
surveillance and enforcement, safety measures “such as removing potential external
distractors or restricting the use of in-vehicle devices, could be effective if
users and legislators feel committed to the importance of attentional control for
road safety.” Without such commitment, they conclude, drivers will again adapt and
underestimate the importance of attention and the risk of distraction, including
their own mental activity while driving.

Article: “Mental Workload While Driving: Effects on Visual Search, Discrimination
and Decision Making,” Miguel Angel Recarte Goldarecena, Ph.D., Universidad
Complutense, and Luis Miguel Nunes González, Ph.D., Dirección General de Tráfico;
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol. 9, No. 2.
Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office.

Reporters: Luis Nunes can be reached by email, through June 5 at this email or
from June 6-July 23 at this email. The cell phone is +34 696 31 21 19. The office
phone in Madrid, c/o Josefa Valcárcel is +34 91 301 82 38.
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest
scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United
States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership
includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and
students. Through its divisions in 53 subfields of psychology and affiliations
with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to
advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human
welfare.

http://www.apa.org/releases/driving_workload.html

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