Attention Demands of Text Messaging

Most of us have done it, taking your eyes off the road in order to send or receive a text message. We know it’s dangerous, so dangerous in fact many states have now passed a law in order to prevent us from doing it. Research proves the relationship between attention and our perceptual experience to be extremely important, but what will it take for people to put their phone down while driving? Attention plays an important role in our interpretations of the world around us, and it has been proven that texting while driving is more unsafe that talking on a cell phone or conversing with a passenger. Using a cell phone while driving uses attentional processing that could be used to attend to information in our environment.

In Lesson 4 we focused on attention which is often described as a filter that allows some information to pass onto higher levels of processing (PSU WC, L4, P4). We studied visual attention demonstrations such as change blindness, the Monkey Business Illusion, Sleight of Hand, Person Swap, and Pickpocket examples; all of which validate why attention is important in our understanding of our surroundings. What I found interesting from this material is the statistical research to back up the dangers of texting while driving. Many studies support the notion that using cell phones while driving is risky, but text messaging and conversing on either a handheld or hands-free cell phone while driving actually slows reaction time more than being drunk or high (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs is illegal, but after diving into further research I am glad that texting has become a widespread concern as a precarious driving habit.

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          Drivers who are text messaging also show more missed lane changes, and vary more in their lane positions and following distances (Hosking, Young, & Regan, 2009). Several recent studies of explicit attention capture have found that when observers are focused on some other object or event, they often experience inattentional blindness (Simons, 2000). This was demonstrated by the monkey business illusion I mentioned earlier; when the individual’s attention to one thing causes them to fail to identify an unforeseen stimulus right before their eyes. This finding has hypothetically catastrophic implications for distracted driving. How we process specific information, and how we manage so many things going on in our environment at the same time is fascinating. According to psychologist and philosopher William James, attention “is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others” (1890).  So in this example, when you are driving and concurrently sending a text message, your mind is withdrawing some things from your environment in order to focus on the task at hand.

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          In 2009, almost 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured in crashes related to driver distraction (NHTSA, 2010). The essential factor to driving safely is keeping your eyes as well as your concentration (your mind) on the road. Text messaging distracts any driver from that crucial task. The processes by which you are able to press the gas pedal, observe and obey road signs, notice the light switching from yellow to red, be aware of the speed the car is traveling in front of you, your grip on the steering wheel, and the song you are listening to on the radio all involves attention. We select what information we need for further processing while setting other information in reserve. We are flooded by a sizeable amount of perceptual data in everything that we do, and we cannot make sense of everything at once. Texting while driving puts the attention needed on the road on the back burner while our mind focuses on our smart phone. The national campaign It Can Wait is a great tool to spread the awareness of how unsafe texting while driving truthfully is.

 

Reference List:

Hosking, S.G., Young, K.L., & Regan, M.A. (2009). The effects of text messaging on young drivers. Human Factors, 51, 582-592.

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Holt.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (September, 2010) Traffic Safety Facts: Distracted Driving, 2009. DOT HS 811 379 Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Pastorino Ph.D., Ellen E. (2012). The Truth about Texting and Talking While Driving: Demonstrating the dangers of distracted driving to students. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201204/the-truth-about-texting-and-talking-while-driving

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2011). Lesson 4: Attention. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/001/content/05_lesson/01_page.html

Simons, D. J., (2000) Attentional Capture and Inattentional Blindness: Trends in Cognitive Sciences; 4(4), 147-155;

Strayer, D.L., Drews, F.A., & Crouch, D.J. (2006).A comparison of the cell phone driver and the drunk driver. Human Factors, 48, 381-391.

3 thoughts on “Attention Demands of Text Messaging

  1. Raenisha M Williams

    In my opinion nothing will make a person put their phone down while driving unless everyone have a major accidents, but texting is not the only cause. The National Safety Council’s annual injury and fatality report found out that only 5% of cellphone-related crashes occur because of driving while the rest is actually talking on the cell phone handheld or hands-free. When you think about accidents and cell phones you automatically go to texting but mostly that’s not the case. Anything that has to do with cell phones are a no go. Whether it’s texting, talking on the phone, or voice-to-text. The National Safety Council’s annual injury and fatality report did a study on the cognitive distraction scale. Using the speech-to-text application while driving had a higher mental workload than driving while talking on a handheld phone and driving while talking on a hands-free cellphone. All three were a high driver mental workload.
    We as a country should make phones automatically disabled when sitting in a moving car. The only thing that should be accessible is google maps.

    Kratsas, U. (2014, March 28). Cellphone use causes over 1 in 4 car accidents. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphone-use-1-in-4-car-crashes/7018505/

  2. Jeffrey M Savakinas

    This is really I great post. This one grabbed my attention as well. It also hits close to home for me. I unfortunately am in profession where I deal with the aftermath of ones lack of attention to the road or their surroundings (their environment.) We often take for granted that we can multi-task and if we only take our eyes of the road for a split second everything will just fine. I can tell you first hand that it could not be any further from the truth. It has become worse over the years. Why? That answer is easy. Its technology! It’s that device you swear was with us at birth, our “technological umbilical cord”, our cell phone. Remember the days when, you had to retrieve a phone number from your long-term memory or short term, depending on the situation of course. In those days a phone was just that, a phone. It didn’t have the ability to think for us or speak. We did it all. In my opinion our attention was where it should be, on the road. Today we are too busy looking at our Facebook, our GPS on our phone; a text message sent from someone we feel is of the utmost importance. Just by doing those things that I have mentioned, our reaction time is compromised greatly. ( Strayer and Johnston’s cell experiment 2001, Cognitive Psychology Goldstein p 94.) We run a greater chance of blowing a red light. All because it just can’t wait. We think it will only take a split second to look. That is only half the battle. Our eyes are fixed on what we need to see that beloved text message but we forget our brain is engaged in processing the words and we are now concentrating on something other than the road. Does controlled processing (Cognitive Psychology p 92) begin to play a factor? Our attention is now divided so it is possible. Does one relate to the other? I believe so. I am certain as time passes and more studies are done someone somewhere will develop new technology that we no longer will need to worry about taking our eys off the road or texting. It may all be done verbally, just like talking on the phone. Just simply just simply using our minds may even do it; the mind after all is an amazingly complex organ. It is our computer. Technology I am certain will do its part to make texting and driving a thing of the past.

  3. Natasha Cocchiarella (nac5348)

    I was drawn to your post exclusively because of the title. It hits close to home as a good friend of mine was killed last year riding his moped because the driver behind him didn’t see him making a left hand turn into his driveway due to texting and driving. Not only did my friend loose his life, but the 18 year old freshly graduated valedictorian driving the car ruined his life. The consequences to texting and driving are life ruining and because it is so hard to control even with legislation, it will always be a problem. After reading your post about attention and perception it got me thinking whether or not maybe texting and driving has become an automatic reaction, an engrained episodic memory that we became so used to that it becomes automatic. I think that people were so used to it before law makers decided to prohibit using cell phones while driving that they can’t really control the habitual act. I personally think that cell phones should be equipped with a motion sensor that at a certain Mph it will deactivate anything besides emergency calls. I think that with the technology we have in cell phones already that this is a feature that is not too far out there to develop. If we can change technology, we can adapt to new behaviors, or lack thereof to create a safer driving environment.

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