Super-Taskers Are They Real or Are They a Figment of Our Own Imagination?

Super-Taskers Are They Real Or Are They a Figment of Our Own Imagination?

We’ve all driven down the highway and witnessed the person in the car in front of us talking on the cell phone, operating the GPS, or taking a sip out of their coffee mug. Some reading this article may even be guilty of doing some of these tasks. Multitasking in everyday situations is common. So should multitasking behind the wheel be of such concern to drivers? Research suggests that, at any daylight hour, over 10% of drivers on U.S. roadways are talking on their cell phones. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that when talking on a cell phone while driving leads to a form of inattention blindness, causing drivers to fail to see up to half of the information in the driving environment that they would have noticed had they not been conversing on the phone, this is according to Nationwide Insurance. The National Safety Council estimates that nearly 28% of all accidents and fatalities on U.S highways are caused by drivers using cell phones. Still drivers are choosing to multitask while driving and when asked will say that they do not feel that they are distracted when using their cell phone in conjunction with driving.

To test the controversial topic, researchers Watson and Strayer set out to determine if it is possible that there are what they call ‘super-taskers’ living amongst us. They defined a ‘super tasker’ as someone who can converse on a cell phone and drive without noticeable impairment to their driving skills. Watson and Strayer needed to find a way to test these so called super taskers. So they took a previously used test called the OSPAN (Operation Span) which involved memorizing items while incorporating math problems and recalling them in the order they were seen. They were aware that the OSPAN task is not part of a typical conversation, but it was their intention to find a clear cut demonstration of dual tasking to use on all participants. Since it wouldn’t be safe to put them behind the wheel and have them driving 65mph down the highway, the two added a driving simulator that depicts a real life scenario of a freeway.

Participants included 90 men and 110 women from the University Of Utah. All participants had normal or corrected to normal vision and were each given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the simulator, as well as the computerized version of OSPAN before beginning the experiment. These participants were then put into the driving simulator and given the auditory version of the OSPAN test through their hands free device. A pace car and distracter vehicles were added to give an accurate scenario of what happens normally when we are