Don’t Talk and Drive?

In this era of multitasking, people commonly talk while driving. Many jurisdictions prohibit the use of hand-held cell-phones, but hands-free calls might be no safer: Certain verbal tasks can disrupt executive processing. Thinking of what to say and speaking take greater cognitive resources than listening. Additional resources may be required when the conversation is with an unseen person or when the voice does not originate from in front of the subject. These researchers examined how several of these factors affect performance of vision-based tasks.

College students listened to recorded instructions for accomplishing tasks, such as constructing a compost pile, and were intermittently asked for verbal responses to related questions. The voic…