University of Toronto research warns against Wi-Fi in cars

Study shows drivers will be too distracted even if devices are voice-operated

2013-10-16

(Press-News.org) TORONTO, ON – Plans to provide high-speed Internet access in vehicles, announced last month by Canadian telecommunications company Rogers Communications and American provider Sprint Corporation, could do with some sobering second-thought, says a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

"Because of the potential for driver distraction, safety should be of great concern," said Professor Ian Spence, author of a new study on the impact of auditory distractions on visual attention. "Many people assume that talking to a voice-operated device will be as safe as using a hands-free cell phone, but neither activity is safe."

Spence and a team of researchers asked subjects to perform an attentional visual field test in which they repeatedly identified the random location of an object in visual clutter displayed on a computer monitor. Poor performance on the test is known to be a good predictor of unsafe driving. Subjects performed the test while carrying out a range of listening and/or speaking tasks or in silence.

An example of an easy task was listening to recordings of news items, much like listening to a car radio. More difficult tasks required subjects to answer simple yes-no questions while performing the visual test. Subjects answered by either speaking out loud in some experimental conditions, or merely thinking of the answer in others. The most-demanding questions required subjects to take the last letter of a presented word (e.g. apple) and speak another word beginning with that letter (e.g. elephant).

Subjects who completed the test of visual attention coupled with the listening/speaking tasks were as accurate as those who completed the visual test in silence. However, they responded much more slowly as the difficulty increased – as much as one second slower with the most demanding tasks.

"It did not matter whether the subject spoke the answer aloud or simply thought about the answer," said Spence. "It was the thinking, not speaking, that caused them to slow down."

Spence said the practical consequences are clear.

"At 50 kilometres per hour, a car travels 13.9 metres in one second. A driver who brakes one second earlier than another driver to avoid a collision, will either prevent it completely or be traveling more slowly when it occurs, lowering the probability of severe injury or fatality. A delay in braking by as much as one second presents a significant threat to safe driving and casts doubt on the belief that hands-free voice-controlled devices reduce driver distraction."

### The study "How speech modifies visual attention" appears in the September/October issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology. The research was funded by a Discovery Grant to Spence from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Prof. Ian Spence
Department of Psychology
University of Toronto
Ian.spence@utoronto.ca
416-978-7623

Sean Bettam
Communications, Faculty of Arts & Science
University of Toronto
s.bettam@utoronto.ca
416-946-7950

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Recession's after-effects could lead to cheating and workplace theft suggests new study

2013-10-16

Toronto – We like to think we'd stick to our ethical principles no matter what. But when people feel financially deprived -- as many did from losses suffered thanks to the last market and banking meltdown -- they are more likely to relax their moral standards and transgress to improve their financial situation. They are also more likely to judge other deprived moral offenders who do the same more leniently, says a new paper to be published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. "We found that most respondents did not think financial deprivation would ...

Predicting health risks of everyday chemicals

2013-10-16

Concern over the safety of everyday household products, such as baby bottles and soaps, has spurred a wide-ranging research effort into predicting the health risks of tens of thousands of chemicals. That's the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Britt E. Erickson, C&EN senior editor, points out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with overseeing the safety of chemicals in consumer products. It's a monumental task — an estimated 80,000 chemicals are on the market ...

Patients with poor nutrition before bladder cancer operation have higher risk of complications

2013-10-16

Patients with bladder cancer are two times more likely to have complications after a radical cystectomy procedure if they have a biomarker for poor nutritional status before the operation, according to study findings presented last week at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Surgeons from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center identified a potentially modifiable risk factor for such postsurgical problems: a low preoperative level of albumin, a marker of the protein level ...

Birds on repeat: Do playbacks hurt fowl?

2013-10-16

PRINCETON, NJ—In the forests of Ecuador, plain-tailed wrens nest in bamboo thickets, singing complex and continuous melodies. Residing nearby are rufous antpittas, small, secretive birds that hop like thrushes and whistle in mossy forests. Together, their songs fill parts of the South American Andes. Birdwatchers often seek out rare and beautiful birds like the wren and antpitta using "playbacks" – or recordings of bird songs – to draw such them out from their hideaways. But does such babbling-on-repeat harm the birds? Using the emphatic sounds of both bird species, ...

Mayo Clinic psychiatrist: Taking guns away from mentally ill won't eliminate mass shootings

2013-10-16

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A string of public mass shootings during the past decade-plus have rocked America leaving policymakers and mental health experts alike fishing for solutions to prevent these heinous crimes. A Mayo Clinic physician, however, argues that at least one proposal won't stop the public massacres: restricting gun access to the mentally ill. J. Michael Bostwick, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist and author of the editorial published online in Mayo Clinic Proceedings today, argues several points including that mass shootings are carefully planned — often spanning ...

Carbon cycle models underestimate indirect role of animals

2013-10-16

Animal populations can have a far more significant impact on carbon storage and exchange in regional ecosystems than is typically recognized by global carbon models, according to a new paper authored by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). In fact, in some regions the magnitude of carbon uptake or release due to the effects of specific animal species or groups of animals — such as the pine beetles devouring forests in western North America — can rival the impact of fossil fuel emissions for the same region, according to the paper ...

Geoscience Workforce Currents #79

2013-10-16

Alexandria, VA –The majority of bachelor's and doctoral graduates did not participate in an internship experience during their postsecondary career, whereas the majority of master's graduates did have at least one internship experience. Most of those bachelor's, master's and doctoral students that held an internship considered their internship experiences to be "very important". Of these master's candidates, 48% were employed within the geosciences at a company they had previously interned at the time. ### For the complete Geoscience Currents #79 please go to: http://bit.ly/17JXlLe. ...

Wari, predecessors of the Inca, used restraint to reshape human landscape

2013-10-16

The Wari, a complex civilization that preceded the Inca empire in pre-Columbia America, didn't rule solely by pillage, plunder and iron-fisted bureaucracy, a Dartmouth study finds. Instead, they started out by creating loosely administered colonies to expand trade, provide land for settlers and tap natural resources across much of the central Andes. The results, which appear in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, shed new light on how early states evolved into empires in the region that became the Inca imperial heartland. A PDF of the study is available on request. The ...

Tracking viral DNA in the cell

2013-10-16

The medical, humanitarian and economical impact of viral diseases is devastating to humans and livestock. There are no adequate therapies available against most viral diseases, largely because the mechanisms by which viruses infect cells are poorly known. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Zurich headed by cell biologist Prof. Urs Greber now presents a method that can be used to display viral DNA in host cells at single-molecule resolution. The method gives unexpected insights into the distribution of viral DNA in cells, and the reaction of ...

Finding blood clots before they wreak havoc

2013-10-16

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Life-threatening blood clots can form in anyone who sits on a plane for a long time, is confined to bed while recovering from surgery, or takes certain medications. There is no fast and easy way to diagnose these clots, which often remain undetected until they break free and cause a stroke or heart attack. However, new technology from MIT may soon change that: A team of engineers has developed a way to detect blood clots using a simple urine test. The noninvasive diagnostic, described in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano, relies on nanoparticles ...

University of Toronto research warns against Wi-Fi in cars

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: