First -a comment about US drivers - we are nortoriously untrained drivers - In places such as Florida, one only needs to pass a 10 min driving test to get a license - the written exams are in several different languages even though all of our signage is in English - many of our symbol signs are Not internationally used.. And even the test isn't always necessary as FL. DMVs are routinely routed by law enforcement for corrupt examiners caught selling licenses. Many, (not all TG) US drivers think: flashing headlights are gang signs & nothing more; A horn is an insult during road rage; The directional signals are turn signals used Only for 90 degree turns & the left lane is only for those with more than one person in it. Passing can be done anytime anywhere - including a single lane curve & riding parallel to the cars in the other lanes ensures you wont get the speeding ticket.. Speeding & cell phones is only a fraction of what makes driving here dangerous - the very fact that we focus on speeding as the
safety solution reflects that it's just DUMB driving that kills here more than anything else....
Excellent article! - It does explain why sometimes one needs to just shut up & drive ;-) - but what the article - admittedly I just scanned - seems Not to address is the choice an individual has to select their attention towards a particular priority. IOW - moms who chat in the park but instantly hear their child's cry. The chat is a secondary activity that ceases when another activity prompts a higher priority attention - just another way to describe mom's extra eye in the back of her head;-)
Same thing w/ driving; you can chat idly when still scanning the road - I do believe though that only an experienced driver can do this - & not everyone is particularly good at driving -some folks are always uncomfortable behind the wheel.. Nevertheless, talking ceases as soon as additional attention is needed on the raod - & yes, certain conversation requires one to pull over - reading certainly does!
---- >
Karen Mahnk
---- John Pedini <jpedini@socialaw.com> wrote:
> Ladies and Gents, it's not just about occupying our hands while we try
> to talk and drive simultaneously. It's about regions of the brain and
> our limited cognitive functionality.
>
> Besides, cell phones have cooties.
>
>
> New York Times, July 31, 2001
>
>
> Car Calls May Leave Brain Short-Handed
>
>
> By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
>
> Scientists have bad news for people who think they can deftly drive a
> car while gabbing on a cell phone.
>
> The first study using magnetic resonance images of brain activity to
> compare what happens in people's heads when they do one complex task, as
> opposed to two tasks at a time, reveals a disquieting fact: the brain
> appears to have a finite amount of space for tasks requiring attention.
>
> When people try to drive in heavy traffic and talk, researchers say,
> brain activity does not double. The amount of brain activity devoted to
> each task actually decreases. As a result, people performing two
> demanding tasks simultaneously do neither one as well as they do each
> one alone.
>
> The study, published in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal NeuroImage, was
> led by Dr. Marcel Just, a psychology professor and co- director of the
> Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in
> Pittsburgh. While this study did not directly examine the brain activity
> of people who were driving cars and conversing, it used tasks that
> engage similar brain regions, Dr. Just said. Moreover, he said, plans
> are under way to study the brains of people who are using driving
> simulators while someone is talking to them.
>
> Dr. Jordan Grafman, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of
> Neurological Diseases and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., said that while the
> study did not involve cell phones, it was relevant to public policy.
> "Lawmakers need to know there is a cost whenever people try to do
> multiple tasks," he said.
>
> Dr. Christof Koch, a professor of cognitive and behavioral biology at
> the California Institute of Technology, said: "No question this study
> was very nicely executed. After all, if you really want to listen to
> something, you close your eyes, right?"
>
> In recent years, it has become possible to map brain areas involved in
> high level cognitive tasks -- processing sentences, comprehending
> paragraphs, formulating strategies, planning many moves ahead and
> evaluating uncertainty.
>
> When people do these mental tasks, functional brain imaging machines can
> detect which areas of their brains become most active. Because active
> brain cells use more oxygen, they can be seen as hot spots against a
> background of less active cells.
>
> The active regions are measured in voxels, volumes of brain tissue about
> the size of a grain of rice. When a particular part of the brain is
> working hard, more voxels light up.
>
> Previous research showed that when a single area of the brain, like the
> visual cortex, has to do two things at once, like tracking two objects,
> there is less brain activation than occurs when it watches one thing at
> a time, Dr. Just said.
>
> The new study sought to find out whether something similar happened when
> two highly independent tasks, carried out in very different parts of the
> brain, were done concurrently. The answer was not obvious, Dr. Just
> said. Maybe the tasks would work independently and activate twice as
> much space in the brain. Or they could compete for space and activate a
> different, and unpredictable, set of brain cells, he said.
>
> Dr. Just and his colleagues chose two tasks for the study. One was
> language comprehension, which is carried out in the brain's temporal
> lobe. The other task required mentally rotating objects in space, a
> process that is done in the parietal lobe.
>
> Eighteen volunteers had their brains scanned while doing one or both
> tasks. For one scan, they listened to complex sentences like "the
> pyramids were burial places and they are one of the seven wonders of the
> ancient world," and had to judge them true or false. For another, they
> were shown pairs of three dimensional figures and asked to rotate them
> mentally to decide whether they were the same.
>
> Then they tried to do both tasks simultaneously and equally
> conscientiously. Researchers confirmed that the two tasks relied on
> different parts of the brain. The language task alone activated 37
> voxels of brain tissue, mostly in temporal regions, Dr. Just said. The
> mental rotation task alone also activated 37 voxels, mostly in parietal
> regions.
>
> But when both tasks were done at the same time, the volunteers' brains
> did not engage the sum of the two, or 74 voxels. Instead, their brains
> displayed only 42 voxels of activity.
>
> On closer inspection, the researchers found that the number of activated
> voxels was smaller and less intense in each of the two brain regions.
> The amount of brain activation generated by mental rotation decreased 29
> percent if the person was also listening to a sentence. The amount of
> activation generated by listening to sentences decreased 53 percent if
> the person was also trying to rotate objects.
>
> While the volunteers' overall accuracy did not suffer, Dr. Just said, it
> took them a bit longer to do each task. If the tasks had been more
> difficult, their performance would have suffered even more.
>
> It appears that the brain has limits and can only do so much at one
> time, Dr. Just said. "You can't just keep piping new things through," he
> said, and expect the brain to keep up. With practice, the brain can
> become more efficient at carrying out multiple tasks, he added, but
> performance is never as good as when the tasks are carried out
> independently.
>
> Everyone has had the experience of trying to do two things at once, like
> driving a car and talking to a passenger, Dr. Just said. Both speech and
> driving can become automatic and not very demanding of brain power. But
> when an experienced driver encounters a sudden increase in complexity --
> an argument erupts and it also starts to sleet -- that driver will
> probably stop the conversation and pay attention to the road.
>
> The difference between in-person and cell phone conversations is that a
> passenger can see changing road conditions and will likely shut up when
> needed, Dr. Just said. The person on the other end of a cell phone does
> not see these changes and may keep on blathering.
>
> Making cell phones hands-free will not solve the problem of the brain's
> inability to carry out complex tasks in tandem. And since it is not
> possible to ban other human conversation in cars, the next best thing is
> education, Dr. Just said. People need to know that their brains have
> limits, even if they are under the illusion that multitasking is the
> wave of the future.
>
>
> --
>
> John Pedini
>
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