People Understand Each Other Less While Driving

Scientists were recently able to determine that people who drive and talk at the same time tend not to understand each other very well, or communicate efficiently. This is one of the few scientific studies not focused on the adverse effects that talking with someone, or over the phone, have on driving and safety on the roads. Rather, the emphasis was placed on determining precisely how driving changes the way we interpret or hear what others are saying to us, LiveScience reports.

In a find opposite to that of previous driving-related research, experts at the University of Illinois have found out that driving reduces a person's ability to listen carefully to what another person is saying, and also their ability to form a coherent response. “You might think that talking is an easy thing to do and that comprehending language is easy. But it's not. Speech production and speech comprehension are attention-demanding activities, and so they ought to compete with other tasks that require your attention – like driving,” says UI psycholinguist Gary Dell.

The new work was conducted using a driving simulator, in which the experts placed participants, and asked them to drive the car as they normally would. Also in the simulator with them were companions, whose goal was to keep a conversation going. Some of these people were at remote locations, communicating with the drivers via hands-free devices. All test subjects, drivers and conversation partners alike, swapped stories, and the researchers looked at how that affected driving behavior and vice-versa. They noticed that, in one of the tests, the virtual car was simply left lying there.

In others, the people behind the wheel focused on driving the car, while also listening to their partners' stories. At the end of their run, they were questioned as to what their companion told them. “The drivers remembered 20 percent less of what was told to them when they were driving,” Dell reveals. “This study shows that various aspects of language go to hell when you're driving,” adds UI psychology professor Art Kramer, who was also involved in the research.

“With modern technology, we're talking more and more while we are doing other things, but we may be understanding one another less and less,” Dell concludes. Details of this investigation were published in the latest issue of the respected scientific journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.