Driving impairs talking

Becic, Ensar; Dell, Gary S.; Bock, Kathryn; Garnsey, Susan M.; Kubose, Tate T.; Kramer, Arthur F. · 2010 · openalex

DOI: 10.3758/pbr.17.1.15

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This study investigates the reciprocal relationship between driving and conversation, specifically addressing whether driving impairs language production, comprehension, and memory. While prior research established that talking on a cell phone degrades driving performance, it remained unclear if driving negatively impacts linguistic abilities. The authors hypothesized that because language processing is resource-demanding, drivers would prioritize the driving task, thereby sacrificing linguistic accuracy. The researchers conducted an experiment using a driving simulator with 96 pairs of participants, half of whom were older adults (mean age 70.7 years) and half younger adults (mean age 19.6 years). Each pair completed a story-retelling task involving listening to and retelling short narratives. Participants performed three blocks: a driving-only block, a speech-only block (with the car parked), and a dual-task block where the driver drove while conversing. Driving performance was measured via continuous metrics (velocity and lane keeping variability) and discrete metrics (braking distance and intersection crossing time). Linguistic performance was assessed by the accuracy of immediate story retelling and later recall of stories heard from partners. The results demonstrated that driving significantly impaired linguistic performance. Drivers exhibited lower accuracy in retelling stories and poorer recall of stories heard from their partners during the dual-task condition compared to the speech-only condition. This decline was exacerbated when driving difficulty increased; drivers were less accurate in retelling stories while crossing intersections than on straightaways. Conversely, driving performance became more stable during conversation, with drivers showing reduced variability in lane keeping and velocity. Older drivers drove more slowly and cautiously, exhibiting less velocity variability during dual-task conditions than younger drivers, yet they still suffered significant declines in linguistic accuracy. The data indicated that drivers prioritized driving stability at the expense of language processing, with speech production bearing a higher cost than comprehension during demanding driving segments. The study concludes that driving impairs talking, contradicting the intuition that conversation is unaffected by routine driving. The findings suggest that drivers strategically allocate cognitive resources to maintain driving safety, leading to degraded language production and memory encoding. This has significant implications for understanding dual-task interference, indicating that costs are not absorbed solely by driving performance. Important conversations may suffer in quality when conducted while driving, and the prioritization of driving over communication could have practical consequences for safety and effective dialogue.

Key finding

Driving significantly impairs the accuracy of speech production and the encoding of spoken information into memory, as drivers prioritize driving stability over linguistic performance.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 192

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via openalex on 2026-05-07 (15 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• dual task performance
• auditory
• cognitive
• visual manual
• mobile phones