Effects of Practice on Interference from an Auditory Task While Driving: A Simulation Study

Shinar, David; Tractinsky, Noam · 2004 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This study investigates how practice affects driver performance when engaging in auditory secondary tasks, specifically addressing limitations in prior research that used experimenter-paced, non-representative tasks without repeated exposure. The authors aimed to determine if drivers can learn to time-share driving and phone conversations effectively, thereby reducing interference over time. The research was motivated by the increasing prevalence of cell phone use while driving and the need to understand whether the deleterious effects of such distractions diminish with experience, particularly across different age groups and task difficulties. The experiment utilized a driving simulator with 30 participants divided into three groups: young/novice drivers (under 6 months experience), experienced middle-aged drivers (8–15 years experience), and older drivers (60–71 years). Participants completed five sessions over two weeks. Each session involved three driving conditions: maintaining 50 mph, maintaining 65 mph, and car-following. Within these, drivers performed either no distraction, a math operations task, or an emotionally-involving conversation. The study measured driving performance metrics, including average speed, speed variance, lane position, and steering variability, alongside subjective workload ratings. Results indicated significant learning effects across most driving measures, with interference from phone tasks diminishing over the five sessions. Practice benefits were most pronounced during the most demanding condition (65 mph), where drivers initially struggled but improved significantly by the final session. In contrast, easier conditions (50 mph and car-following) showed little change, suggesting participants had already reached performance ceilings. Age played a critical role: older drivers exhibited greater speed variance and lower average speeds than younger groups, particularly at high speeds, though they also demonstrated improvement with practice. Regarding task type, the artificial math operations task caused greater interference than the emotionally-involving conversation. Notably, conversation sometimes resulted in lower speed variance than the no-distraction condition, while math tasks consistently degraded performance initially. The findings suggest that while phone conversations initially impair driving, especially for older drivers and during high-demand scenarios, continued practice allows drivers to mitigate these effects. The study concludes that the negative impact of conversing on the phone is real but may not be as severe with repeated dual-task experience, particularly for younger and middle-aged drivers. This implies that drivers may adapt to the cognitive load of phone use over time, challenging the assumption that distraction effects remain constant regardless of familiarity with the dual-task environment.

Key finding

Interference from phone tasks on driving performance diminished significantly over five days of practice, with older drivers showing greater initial impairment and more variable learning curves than younger drivers.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 30

Provenance

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

Topics

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

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data, observational prevalence
• Theoretical Contribution: theory or model