Laura's Research Summary 2
Effects on Cognition During an Audio or Visual Stimulus Laura Penrod
With all the research I have done my general topic had to change just a bit. The research articles and studies that I was finding dealt with driving and cell phone use. So I focused my attention and time in finding articles that focused on the subject of how dangerous it is to drive while talking or texting on a cell phone. Additional research I wanted to find was more articles and studies that dealt with just texting while driving but so far I am not fortunate to find any. I did however find studies and articles that had different angles to them and not just ones that focused on just people using hand held devices while driving. The first article I found gave statistics about cell phone laws in different areas of the world. 212 million people in the U.S. used cell phones in 2006 compared to the 4.6 million in 1990. This spike in use also came with the hazards they would play while trying to focus on tasks. The U.S. Department of Transportation reported that inattentive driving accounted for 6.4% of crash fatalities in 2003. It stated two possibilities as to why cell phones cause distractions. First, they must take their eyes off the road to dial, and for many teens text. Secondly, drivers can become so involved in the conversation that their ability to concentrate is severely impaired. These reasons are common sense to most but still we see that people are continuing to use their cell phones and drive. Some areas of the world have banned hand held devices. In 2001 New York passed a law that banned the use of hand held devices while driving. It also stated that as many as 40 other countries restrict or prohibit the use of cell phones while driving. I know first hand of Australia, you may not use a cell phone in any way while driving. The second study I found was titled Cell-Phone-Induced Driver Distraction. This research focused on hands free devices. They conducted 4 separate studies. Each study that was conducted in this research study used a driving simulator. Their first study focused on the probability of participants recognizing objects that they had fixated on while driving. Participants were twice as likely to recognize roadway signs in the single-task condition as in the dual-task condition. Even if they were on a hands free device they still had trouble remembering the signs that they had encountered on the road when they looked directly at them. The main finding of this article was that even though the drivers looked at objects placed by the road and road signs they did not necessarily see them because their attention had been diverted to the cell phone conversation. The third article I read was titled Unusual UNC Research Confirms Drivers Face Multiple Distractions. This article showed a study that applied to real life. This study wanted to find out what distractions drivers face. The study involved 70 people in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Researchers installed miniature cameras below the rear view mirror that would turn on and record the drivers when they started their car. This study not only looked at how many drivers were on their cell phones but how many drivers were reading or eating/drinking. The results were not surprising to me. They found that thirty percent of drivers were talking on their cell phones. They also found that a frightening forty percent read or wrote, mainly when their cars were stopped at lights or signs. Still it shows that drivers are very distracted. It goes on to say that there will be many more technological advances and we as drivers need to learn to manage the distractions that we can control so we can maintain safety on the roadways. The results of the articles I found were not that different from the results of my first summary paper. Using a cell phone distracts drivers from focusing on the road. As in my last summary I have concluded that hands free devices are no better than hand held devices. There are many distractions drivers face when driving as my third article showed, but we as drivers need to be responsible and learn how to manage the distractions that we can control. Screaming children in the backseat are hard to handle, putting down your cell phone is easy. Future direction for me, I believe, is to find more articles that focus on the biological reasons as to why talking on a cell phone while driving is a bad idea. I would like to find research that has been done that measured brain patterns and areas of the brain that shut off and on when a person is multi-tasking. Some future direction that my group needs is just to continue to find articles relating to our topics. Since our group was having trouble finding many articles that dealt with just cognition we decided to include memory in our research. I believe that our group is heading in a terrific direction. All we really need to do now is find a way to connect all of our topics together.
Work Cited
Driving and Cell Phones. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from http://safemotorist.com/articles/driving_cell_phones.aspx.
Strayer, David L. & Drews, Frank A. (2007). Cell-Phone Induced Driver Distraction. Association for Psychological Science, 16, 128-131.
University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill (2003, August 7). Unusual UNC Research Confirms Drivers Face Multiple Distractions. Science Daily. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/08/030807075624.htm.
