speaker’s phone March 26, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , trackbackEarlier this month I talked a bit about cell phone use while driving, and how studies seem to indicate it’s talking that’s the problem, not using a phone. Cognitive Daily has a post up on a study that looks at the difference between talking on a cell phone vs. talking to a passenger. The results of the study are significant, but I have some reservations, as does Dave Munger over at Cog Daily:
Arguably, the topic of the conversation — a life-threatening situation — is one that primes participants to be looking for danger. I’d be interested to see additional studies with different, more benign conversation topics. Also, since both participants were licensed drivers, these passengers might be more likely to alert drivers to dangers than, say, a child might. The study also doesn’t address hands-free cell phone use. Perhaps this is just as safe as conversing with the passenger for this type of conversation.
In addition to those, my main reservation is that the number of subjects was 96, which isn’t a very large sample. But I found the paper very interesting, and, as I said, its results are significant even with the small number of test subjects. I’d be quite interested in reading more work along the same lines, as well as work into why there is a difference. At first glance I find it difficult to accept that our brains perceive spoken language differently depending on how much electronics are involved.
Tags for this article: society
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