Effects of practice, age, and task demands, on interference from a phone task while driving.
Shinar D, Tractinsky N, Compton R · 2005
View Original AbstractPhone conversations create measurable cognitive interference that improves with practice but never fully disappears, especially for older adults.
Plain English Summary
Researchers studied how phone conversations affect driving performance over time, testing drivers in a simulator across five sessions with hands-free phone tasks. They found that while phone conversations initially interfere with driving skills, drivers gradually adapt and the interference diminishes with practice, though older drivers and more complex phone tasks still showed greater impairment. This suggests the cognitive load from phone use while driving can be partially managed through experience, but significant risks remain.
Why This Matters
This study reveals a crucial aspect of how our brains handle the cognitive demands of phone use that's often overlooked in EMF research. While the focus here is on driving performance rather than biological effects, it demonstrates that phone conversations create measurable cognitive interference that affects complex tasks requiring attention and coordination. The finding that older adults show greater vulnerability aligns with broader research showing age-related differences in EMF sensitivity and cognitive processing. What this means for you is that the mental load from phone use isn't just about the device itself, but how your brain manages multiple demanding tasks simultaneously. The science demonstrates that even hands-free phone conversations require significant cognitive resources, and while we can adapt somewhat over time, the interference never fully disappears.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study.
Study Details
Experimental research on the effects of cellular phone conversations on driving indicates that the phone task interferes with many driving-related functions, especially with older drivers. Unfortunately in past research (1) the dual task conditions were not repeated in order to test for learning, (2) the 'phone tasks' were not representative of real conversations, and (3) most often both the driving and the phone tasks were experimenter-paced. In real driving drivers learn to time-share various tasks, they can pace their driving to accommodate the demands of a phone conversation, and they can even partially pace the phone conversation to accommodate the driving demands. The present study was designed to better simulate real driving conditions by providing a simulated driving environment with repeated experiences of driving while carrying two different hands-free 'phone' tasks with different proximities to real conversations.
In the course of five sessions of driving and using the phone, there was a learning effect on most o...
Show BibTeX
@article{d_2005_effects_of_practice_age_2591,
author = {Shinar D and Tractinsky N and Compton R},
title = {Effects of practice, age, and task demands, on interference from a phone task while driving. },
year = {2005},
url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15667818/},
}