Using Phones While Driving - Coursework Example

The law banning the use of mobile phones in cars has been in place for some time now. However, there are increasing reports of people disobeying thelaw. Draw on theories and research in selective attention to produce an argument which would convince law breakers to stop using their phones while driving. Road accidents that result due to mobile phones usage while driving, is a serious issue in contemporary urban societies. Some basic legislation has been introduced to deal with this problem, but their effectiveness is in question. The academic fraternity is at the forefront of finding solutions to curb this phenomenon. Over the last decade or so (the decade where mobile phone usage became widespread), plenty of studies have been conducted and the results published in scholarly journals. Not surprisingly, almost every research undertaking led to the following conclusion: “Mobile phone usage while driving is a serious life hazard” (Rees, et. al., 2001). The object of the rest of the essay is to highlight some of the salient reasons that led researchers to this conclusion. It is hoped that the explication of the underlying theories and facts would convince lawbreakers to stop using mobile phones while driving. Several studies have been conducted to understand the implications of selective attention and driving. One of the most important of these studies was conducted by Geraint Rees and his team. Rees proposes that “the level of perceptual load in a display is a crucial factor that cannot be ignored in situations of low perceptual load” (Rees, et. al., 2001). Attending to a mobile phone while driving falls under the category of ‘situation of low perceptual load’. In one of the key tests, the research team combined two unrelated tasks – one which requires selective attention and the other working memory. As per the scientific understanding of selective attention at the time of this experiment, “The increased load in the working memory task should have increased the processing of visual distracters in the selective attention task. It was believed that though the two tasks were not related, high load in the working memory task should reduce the availability of working memory for maintaining stimulus priorities in the selective attention task and thus lead to greater intrusion of irrelevant distracters”. (Rees, et. al., 2001) But the results were a little different. It turned out that the availability of working memory for actively continuing stimulus-processing priorities is very important for directing attention to relevant rather those irrelevant stimuli; and hence reducing the intrusion of irrelevant distracters. In a lay person’s terms, he/she cannot maintain full attention to the visual task when the temporary memory is engaged in another activity – like speaking. This is a very convincing argument against the usage of mobile phones while driving automotives (Rees, et. al., 2001). Another scientific support against mobile phone usage while driving comes from behavioural and functional imaging results of random participants in the study. For example, the imaging study reveals that the effects of working memory load in the prefrontal cortex interfere with distracter related tasks in posterior cortices suggesting that the frontal lobes play a significant role in the control of attention. Hence, the study performed by Rees and his team puts forth conclusive results to the effect that speaking and driving don’t go well together (Rees, et. al., 2001). Helmholtz is another pre-eminent scientist who conducted various experiments with respect to selective attention. For example, he provided a detailed and comprehensive analysis of some key experimental paradigms that help measure the way in which attentional instructions can control the rate and precision of visual recognition. For example, “Even a single letter presented in an otherwise empty visual field is identified faster and more accurately when it is preceded by a small dot in the same location. Apparently, access to the identity of visual shapes depends on access to their locations, and the dot enhances this localization process. A similar phenomenon, known as response competition, occurs when the cued object and a nearby object call for opposing motor responses. For example, subjects exhibit slow reaction times when they are attempting to name a red color patch flanked by the word "green." (Hoffman, 1994) From his experiments, Helmholtz was able to prove that attentional selection of one object in the visual field does interfere with the identification of other, presumably unattended, objects. According to Nancy Kanwisher and Paul Downing the neural representations of dissimilar objects in the image smother each other, and attention acts by biasing this competition. For example, the image attributes of the pertinent object are consolidated while those of irrelevant ones are weakened. In another related study, Kastner and his research team tested this hypothesis in human beings. In their experiments, “the overall neural response from each of these brain areas was lower when four objects were presented simultaneously above and to the right of the central display in the peripheral parts of the subjects visual field than when the same four objects were presented sequentially in the same locations, even though the total amount of retinal stimulation (integrated over time) was identical in the two cases. Kastner and colleagues interpret these results as reflecting an increasing suppressive effect from competitive interactions among the neural representations of different objects.” (Hoffman, 1994) In the next experiment performed by Kastner and his team, the reduction in the neural reaction to concurrent compared with successive stimuli was much less intense when attention was directed to one of the four secondary stimuli. Based on the findings of this result, it could be argued that attention guards the depiction of the target item from the intrusive effects of nearby stimuli (Kanwisher & Downing, 1998). All of the experiments discussed above are very lucid in their rationale and significant for the case of driving while speaking. The experimenters “not only demonstrate the reduction of response for simultaneously presented objects, and the attenuation of that effect by attention, but also quantify these effects separately within each of the cortical areas that make up the early stages of the visual pathway. This work raises the standards of brain-imaging research well above the routine inventories of brain activations that are the standard fare of the field.” (Kanwisher & Downing, 1998) It could then be concluded that when a number of stimuli are offered at once, the visual system constructs something “less than the sum of its responses to the items when presented alone”. Although some more work is still needed to determine the workings of neural mechanisms and systems, there is no doubt whatsoever over the life hazard posed by speaking in mobile phones while driving an automobile. We (the users of mobile phones) are not “passive recipients of the information that washes over our sensory receptors, but active participants in our own process of perception”. With an understanding of recent developments in cognitive and neural mechanisms of selective attention, safe driving practices are becoming all the more clear cut. It is up to users of this information to act in line with their interests or in opposition to it. References: de Fockert, Jan W., Geraint Rees, Christopher D. Frith, and Nilli Lavie. "The Role of Working Memory in Visual Selective Attention., " Science.  291.5509 (March 2, 2001): 1803.  Hoffman, James E. "Selective Attention in Vision.", Science.  263.n5154 (March 25, 1994): 1780(2).  Kanwisher, Nancy, and Paul Downing., "Separating the wheat from the chaff. " Science.  282. n5386 (Oct 2, 1998): 57(2). Read More