Effects of Cell Phone Conversations on Driver Performance While Driving Under Highway Monotony

It has often been suggested by individuals that engaging in a cell phone conversation would help keep them awake under monotonous conditions where task underload might lead to a decrease in arousal. To further extend laboratory findings of performance in vigilance type tasks while distracted, a monotonous highway driving scenario was designed to test the anecdotal hypothesis of improved performance. Driver performance related to lane keeping and recall memory were studied under distracted and non-distracted conditions. Results of the simulator study were consistent with laboratory findings of performance decrement when dual tasking indicating that the perceived benefits from the secondary conversational task does not outweigh its costs.