Do driving impairments from concurrent cell-phone use diminish with practice

Our research examined the effects of practice on in-vehicle cell-phone use. Drivers that reported either high or low real world cell-phone usage were selected to participate in four, hour-and-a-half simulated driving sessions, on different days. The research consisted of two phases, a training phase and a novel transfer phase. Compared to single-task driving, dual-task performance deficits persisted through training and transfer driving conditions. Furthermore, groups of high and low real world experience were equally impaired. It is concluded that practice does not improve the ability to drive while conversing on a cell-phone. Researchers have consistently found robust driving-while-phoning impairments on a number of driving variables, including reaction time to braking events, driver speed, and likelihood of an accident. These findings are supported by a wide variety of research methods that include real-world observations, epidemiological research, instrumented vehicle monitoring, and laboratory driving simulations. Taken together there is a strong indication that concurrent cell-phone conversation decreases a drivers responsiveness to the environment and increases the likelihood of an accident. However, the current driving literature does not adequately address the question of whether practice can reduce or eliminate impairment from concurrent cell-phone use. Well-established training and skill acquisition literatures seem to suggest that the fundamental nature of both driving and conversation would preclude concurrent automatization. From the skill acquisition framework developed by Schneider and Shiffrin, driving and talking on the phone can be classified as containing both variably mapped and consistently mapped task components (1977). Performance on variably mapped aspects of driving and phone conversation should therefore be limited by the amount of attention that can be given to the tasks and should not improve with any amount of practice (Norman an