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Cell-Phoning Drivers Get Failing Grade from Johns Hopkins

June 22, 2005
Using a cell phone, even a hands-free cell phone, while driving received another black mark as researchers contend that the practice may distract drivers because the brain cannot handle both tasks.

• California Motorists Cope With New Hands-Free Law • More Teens Using Cell Phones While Driving • Drivers Impaired Just by Listening to Cell Phone • Driving While Phoning Gums Up Traffic, Study Finds • Study: Drivers Using Cell Phones As Bad As Drunks • Survey: Outlaw Cell Phone Use While Driving • Cell Phone No. 1 Driver Distraction • More Drivers Talking While Driving • Listening, Talking, Driving Don't Mix • Poll Finds Motorists Irked At Other Drivers • Crash Risk Four Times Higher When Driver is On the Phone • Cell-Phoning Drivers Get Failing Grade from Johns Hopkins • Study: Eight Percent of Drivers Are On the Phone • Feds Say Hands-Free Cell Phone Ineffective • Hands-Free Phones Safer, Study Finds • Make a Call, Get a Ticket --- Cell Phone Hazards • Study Finds Little Short-Term Cell Phone Health Risk • Cell Phones Linked to Bee Decline • Mayo Clinic Finds Cell Phones Safe in Hospitals • Origin of California Cell Phone Fire Disputed • Cell Phone Ignites, California Man Severely Burned • Study: Cell Phone Users Have Lower Sperm Counts • Study: Drivers Using Cell Phones As Bad As Drunks • Doctors Warn Against Cell Phone Use In Storms • Cell Phones Cleared in Gas Fire • Sleep With Your Cell Phone? Don't Forget the Dog • Feds Warn of Cell Phone Battery Hazards • Risk of Cell Phone Explosions Growing • Cell Phone Catches Fire • Battery Recall • Traffic Tickets • Gasoline Fires • Radiation Fears --- • Consumer Complaints

The brain cannot simultaneously give full attention to both the visual task of driving and the auditory task of listening, a study by a Johns Hopkins University psychologist suggests. The study, published in a recent issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, reinforces earlier behavioral research on the danger of mixing mobile phones and motoring.

"Our research helps explain why talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance, even when the driver is using a hands-free device," said Steven Yantis, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the university’s Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

"The reason?" he said. "Directing attention to listening effectively 'turns down the volume' on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited -- a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality -- say, in this case, talking on a cell phone -- it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality -- in this case, the visual task of driving."

Yantis’s chief collaborator on this research project was Sarah Shomstein, who was a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins. Shomstein is now a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Though the results of Yantis' research can be applied to the real world problem of drivers and their cell phones, that was not directly what the professor and his team studied. Instead, healthy young adults ages 19 to 35 were brought into a neuroimaging lab and asked to view a computer display while listening to voices over headphones. They watched a rapidly changing display of multiple letters and digits, while listening to three voices speaking letters and digits at the same time. The purpose was to simulate the cluttered visual and auditory input people deal with every day.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Yantis and his team recorded brain activity during each of these tasks. They found that when the subjects directed their attention to visual tasks, the auditory parts of their brain recorded decreased activity, and vice versa.

Yantis' team also examined the parts of the brain that control shifts of attention. They discovered that when a person was instructed to move his attention from vision to hearing, for instance, the brain’s parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex produced a burst of activity that the researchers interpreted as a signal to initiate the shift of attention. This surprised them, because it has previously been thought that those parts of the brain were involved only in visual functions.

"Ultimately, we want to understand the connection between voluntary acts of the will (for instance, a choice to shift attention from vision to hearing), changes in brain activity (reflecting both the initiation of cognitive control and the effects of that control), and resultant changes in the performance of a task, such as driving," Yantis said.

"By advancing our understanding of the connection between mind, brain and behavior, this research may help in the design of complex devices – such as airliner cockpits – and may help in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders such as ADHD or schizophrenia."

Last month, government researchers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that using a cell phone while driving is a major cause of traffic accidents.

Regulators from NHTSA and researchers from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute watched 100 drivers for a year. They report that cell phone use precipitated many crashes and near misses.

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