Can you chat on your cell and safely drive a car? How about if the phone is hands free? For 97.5 percent of us, the answer is no.
The fact that the vast majority of us are unable to focus on a phone call and the road simultaneously, may be news to some, but to experts in cognitive psychology, it's surprising that theres anyone who can successfully multi-task.
According to cognitive theory, these individuals ought not to exist, says psychologist Jason Watson. Yet in a new study, he and David Strayer, also a psychologist at the University of Utah, found a small percentage of us really can successfully do two things at once. We use the supertasker term as a convenient way to describe their exceptional multitasking ability. Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers, he adds.
In their study, which will published later this year in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, the researchers assessed the simulated freeway driving of 200 participants. Then they had the subjects repeat the task, but this time they also had to conduct a cell phone conversation that involved memorizing words and solving math problems. Performance was then measured in four areasbraking reaction time, following distance, memory, and math execution.
As expected, results showed that for the group, performance suffered across the board while driving and talking on a hands-free cell phone.
For those who were not supertaskers and who talked on a cell phone while driving the simulators, it took 20 percent longer to hit the brakes when needed and following distances increased 30 percent as the drivers failed to keep pace with simulated traffic while driving. Memory performance declined 11 percent, and the ability to do math problems fell 3 percent.
However, when supertaskers talked while driving, they displayed no change in their normal braking times, following distances or math ability, and their memory abilities actually improved 3 percent.
The results are in line with Strayers prior studies showing that driving performance routinely declines under dual-task conditions namely talking on a cell phone while driving and is comparable to the impairment seen in drunken drivers.
Yet contrary to current understanding in this area, the small number of supertaskers showed no impairment on the measurements of either driving or cell conversation when in combination. Further, researchers found that these individuals performance even on the single tasks was markedly better than the control group.
There is clearly something special about the supertaskers, says Strayer. Why can they do something that most of us cannot? Psychologists may need to rethink what they know about multitasking in light of this new evidence. We may learn from these very rare individuals that the multitasking regions of the brain are different and that there may be a genetic basis for this difference.
If you regularly drive while talking on your cell, dont assume your accident-free record means you are a supertasker. Says Strayer, While wed probably all like to think we are the exception to the rule, the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
