textarea | One argument that the results do not necessarily imply is that the experiment did not account for the length of time one has been driving. For example, if someone has been driving many years, the act of of turning a steering will and pushing break pedals will become almost automatic to the person. Thus, someone with more experience would be expected to be able to drive with less errors despite being on the phone. Additionally, the results do not account for the newness of the task with the joystick. This is a very different movement to turning a steering wheel and, despite the 7 minutes of practice prior to the task, it is reasonable to assume that not all participants were as comfortable with the task. In this way, it is apparent that talking on the phone may not be the exact reason for the number of errors; it could also be attributed to the task itself, which is very different than using a steering wheel. Through these two arguments, it is apparent that the results of Strayer and Johnston (1976) do not necessarily contribute to the idea that talking on the phone while driving causes more errors in judgment.  | name | Tucker Meijer | Submit_button_x | 3 | Submit_button_y | 9 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The experiment could have faulty data since the average age is 21. This does not represent the actual average age on the road. It can also skew the data because around the age of 21 the brain is not fully developed, possibly making multi-tasking more difficult. In addition, a simulation on a computer does not fully assimilate the real-world driving experience. Driving is also much more natural than the reaction during this experiment would be, in which after deciding whether to press “stop” or “go”, you have to recall which button corresponds on the keyboard. Lastly, while some conversations may be modulated by the driving conditions, examples like young kids in the backseat, who don’t know or pay attention to the driving conditions, can’t properly adjust—just like a phone call. | name | Mae Cromwell | Submit_button_x | 28 | Submit_button_y | 15 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | You might argue that the experiments performed by Strayer and Johnston were simulated and participants may not have been paying as close attention as they would if they were driving. When your life is actually in danger when you are driving the driver may pay less attention to the phone conversation and more attention to the red and green lights. Also, the participant may not have found the simulated experiment to be difficult and therefore got lazy throughout the experiment which lead to increased reaction time.  | name | Geralyn Lam | Submit_button_x | 30 | Submit_button_y | 28 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The results obtained by Strayer & Johnston don’t necessarily prove that cell phone usage while driving increases the risk of an accident because the controlled nature in which the experiments are conducted may not be sufficiently analogous to a real-world situation for the results of the experiments to be applicable. There are a whole slew of other factors that come into play when driving that may keep the driver sharp, despite the usage of a cell phone, like the fact that other cars would be present on the road. The mere fact that it was not a high pressure situation in which the safety of the subject would be at risk may make him/her complacent in their actions toward their tasks, thus skewing the results of Strayer and Johnston’s experiment. 
It would not be safe for this experiment to be conducted under real world conditions because accidents may happen, but that is one possible reason why this experiment is not completely conclusive.  | name | Kelly Kim | Submit_button_x | 48 | Submit_button_y | 19 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I think thee are problems with the applicability of the experiment to a real life scenario, i.e. driving. The method of using a joystick to follow a dot along a sine curve was flawed in that this is not a task that mirrors driving. People spend many many hours driving. This time gives drivers practice. I believe that the task used in this experiment is potentially more difficult than driving for some, if not all the participants. Furthermore, conversations are typically not occurring with a person the driver is unfamiliar with, and may not always be of such a high cognitive demand as a political conversation or a task that requires one to generate words. Conversations are natural and usually take little cognitive demand. As such, a normal conversation while performing a task that most people have many hours of practice with does not mirror the experiment presented here. Rather, the two methods used are much more difficult than conversation while driving.  | name | Jeff Anderson | Submit_button_x | 24 | Submit_button_y | 15 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The first and perhaps largest part of this experiment that I would critique is the ecological validity. I feel that Strayer and Johnson were much too quick to relate their results to a real-life, fairly unrelated situation. Does this assigned task actually simulate real-life driving conditions, or is simply an experiment on attention? Real driving is significantly different than pursuing a target on a screen using a joystick. This experiment was vastly less predictable than the typical driving experience, and the task difficulty may not align with the typical driving difficulty. Lastly, the experimenters ignored the possible effects of the fact that a subject might be able to learn to multitask in this way. The subjects would be much more familiar with a car than with this joystick, and practice may significantly decrease the negative effects of talking on the phone while driving.  | name | Marah Brubaker | Submit_button_x | 36 | Submit_button_y | 26 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The pursuit tracking task is much different from an actual driving environment. It was a novel testing environment, and so that could have led to a cumulative effect with the speaking tasks which led to worse performance than the control. It is possible that in an actual driving environment, there is no difference in performance on the road between speaking and not speaking. Perhaps if subjects were tested in an apparatus that more closely mimicked true driving, results could be extrapolated to actual driving. 

Also, the speaking tasks that attempted to mimic conversation on the phone were not natural reflections of the mental processes involved in actual conversations. In the shadowing condition, subjects "repeated words that the experimenter read to them", while the "word generation task" involved production of words that start with a letter matching the final letter of a word stated by the experimenter. Neither of these involve the skills used in actual conversation. In a conversation, it is not necessary to repeat the exact phrases of the person who you are speaking to. Also, the word generation task requires even more cognitive work than actual conversation. Conversation can be put on a lower-cognitive priority if driving is difficult at that moment. One could stop listening to the person speaking on the other line briefly or in bursts during the conversation and thereby still retain a great deal of attention on the road. The word matching requires continual and concerted thought to find new words. 
 
Perhaps actual conversation requires less attention than the word generation task, but similar effort to the shadowing condition. In this case, even if you accept the validity of the pursuit tracking task in representing driving, because the shadowing task did not show a significant difference in performance from the single-task, you would still be forced to accept that there is not significant evidence to suggest that talking on the phone leads to impaired driving. | name | Carlos Johnson-Cruz  | Submit_button_x | 14 | Submit_button_y | 22 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | As a libertarian, I would probably object to the conclusion that hands-free and hand-held devices distract drivers and can be dangerous. This is a blanket statement that does not take into account the different levels of expertise among different drivers, and is based off an experiment that, being conducted in a laboratory setting, does not emulate the real-world at all. For instance, the experimenters tested their hypotheses using a ‘simple’ and a ‘difficult’ course in Experiment 2, but their judgments on what is difficult and what is not, can not speak for all other drivers. The pursuit rotor task can also hardly be used to draw a parallel to the real world, where drivers probably pay much more attention to the road because of the possibility of actual consequences, such as a car crash. In addition, there could be urgent reasons for somebody to be on the phone while driving, e.g. to inquire about the state of a loved one in the hospital. It would therefore be unfair for the government to simply clamp down on civilians’ freedom to talk on the phone while driving, as Strayer and Johnston seem to suggest. 
 | name | Alizeh Sethi  | Submit_button_x | 18 | Submit_button_y | 13 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | If I were trying to invalidate this study, I would point out that the stakes are lower for a simulated driving experiment than in real life so people might not try as hard to observe traffic rules. A simulation may not be generalizable to real life driving, especially because the experiment uses a joystick and computer which do not require the same motor function as a wheel and breaks. Also, 18-30 year olds might be more reckless and less experienced drivers in general so the magnitude of results could be an inaccurate representation of the driving population as a whole. There could also be a confounding variable in terms of the topic drivers were engaging with: radio listeners were allowed to choose their own topic while phone talkers had one assigned. Radio listeners might choose less involved or contentious topics. In the extra control condition, although they attempt to control the topic, the subject of the conversations phone talkers had is still different than the subject of the  book on tape. In addition, there were only 24 undergraduates in the second study, which is not a significantly large sample size. Since the results from both studies suggest people drive worse under more difficult conditions, a libertarian would argue that people should be able to judge for themselves whether or not the driving conditions warrant hanging up the phone or not.  | name | Maggie Shea | Submit_button_x | 23 | Submit_button_y | 16 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | If I were attempting to attack the method and conclusions of the experiment performed by Strayer and Johnston, the aspect of the study that I would criticize is the use of the pursuit rotor task to simulate driving conditions experienced in the real world. There are several aspects of this task that cause it to deviate significantly from driving in a real-world situation. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the two is the use of a joystick in the place of a steering wheel. Of course, these two modes of controlling the direction of an object are inherently different, as a steering wheel can only control movement from left to right, while the joystick is additionally responsible for forward and backward relocations. Continuing the discussion on how the experimental design deviates from the real world driving is the use of a pursuit task rather than a more-realistic driving simulation. As described within the literature, the pursuit rotor task incorporated random motion of a target, which the participant was instructed to follow to the best of their ability. From a critical viewpoint, the attentional demands of this exercise deviate considerably from those required during a normal driving situation. Specifically, normal driving typically does not require the driver to respond to conditions that are purely random. Although there are certainly exceptions, most aspects of driving are predictable, especially for drivers who have considerable practice in a variety of road conditions. In the real-world setting, individuals maneuvering a vehicle are able to see the road ahead, gauge the location of surrounding vehicles, and monitor circumstances that typically lead to traffic accidents, such as passing through an intersection or changing lanes. Since most of these aspects of driving are predictable, it can be argued that the implication of randomness in the pursuit task requires greater attention than typical driving conditions. Because the attentional demand may have been higher in the experimental setting, the conclusions of the experiment may be partially invalidated.  | name | Scott Nelson | Submit_button_x | 0 | Submit_button_y | 0 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I'd argue that the results don't necessarily suggest that cell phone use increases risk of accidents because of the way the experiment was done. First of all, the experiment had a rule that when a red light suddenly showed up,the participant would have to stop as quickly as possible. In real life, there are yellow "slow down" light, which warn drivers when a stop light is coming so that they don't have to abruptly stop. Because of this detail, the experiment doesn't simulate actual driving. Also, the experiment involved the use of a joystick instead of an actual steering wheel. Some people may argue that they're so good at driving that they can talk and drive. In the experiment, the participants aren't really driving and the simulation of it isn't realistic enough to warrant the idea that cell phone use increases accident risk while driving. | name | Shaunpaul Jones | Submit_button_x | 27 | Submit_button_y | 12 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | In terms of ecological validity, Strayer and Johnston lose major points. Driving in the real world is quite different from following a target around a computer screen using a joystick. Also, in the real world, our attention isn't primarily focused on following a target, so that portion of the experiment was flawed. | name | Yariana Diaz | Submit_button_x | 27 | Submit_button_y | 10 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I would argue that the results obtained by Strayer and Johnston don't necessarily imply that cell phone use while driving increases the risk of having an accident because the participants are not necessarily in a difficult setting for driving. Although the experimenters may attempt to make the experiment difficult for participants, each participant probably finds different aspects of driving hard. As Strayer and Johnston mention in their General Discussion, as difficulty increases the more likely a conversation or side activity by the driver will decrease. Therefore, I would argue that the participants in this experiment aren't pressured enough by failure from difficulty causing them to be more likely to get distracted.    | name | Connor Sheehan  | Submit_button_x | 26 | Submit_button_y | 14 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | In this experiment the driving simulation is done with only hands whereas in real driving you have access to all four limbs. This would allow for a faster response time as a twitch of your right foot would be faster than taking your hand off the joystick to the red button to signal braking. Additionally, in a real driving situation you would be paying more attention at times that have more potential to be dangerous which would heighten peoples responses. | name | Ian Kadish | Submit_button_x | 19 | Submit_button_y | 12 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | As a libertarian, I would oppose the methods of this study by questioning the ecological validity. The task was a simulated drive in front of a computer which doesn't mimic real life scenarios. Additionally, having to brake as soon as a red light appears on a screen does not really represent what happens when someone is driving; perhaps this only imitates the need to break rapidly when in an emergency situation like being about to crash or missing a red light. For the first experiment, no participants were over the age of 30 so he results cannot be generalized to older populations whose results might vary due to more experience driving. 

The participant's results may be skewed because they know they are participating in a study their driving ability in different conditions so they may be more weary of driving carefully, or on the other hand, they might want to fulfill the experimenter's expectations by doing worse on the driving task while talking on the phone (Because it is a common theme that driving while distracted increases your risk to be in an accident/reduce your reaction time)

In the condition where the Ps only listened to the book on tape, there was no test to see how much attention the Ps actually paid to the book being played.

The task difficulty is also hard to relate to real life because having to stay on the ideal path while maneuvering with a joy stick you don't frequently use can be difficult, especially on a difficult track. so results might vary dependent on a Ps proficiency in using a joystick.

The pursuit rotor task is not similar to a driving scenario | name | Gustavo Marino | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | Submit_button_x | 20 | Submit_button_y | 12 | 
textarea | The first experiment is flawed in that red lights don't just pop up, they are preceded by a yellow light, and thus the task at hand is far more difficult than everyday driving. As for reaction time, the yellow light lasts 3 seconds and the .2 s difference is negligible in that context. As for the 2nd experiment, could it be possible that the act of simply talking is what causes the attention deficit? In which case carpools are just as dangerous as cell phone usage. But we can't ban carpools since that would be ridiculous and since cell phones are not shown to be more dangerous than car pools, we can't ban cell phones either. | name | Eugene Lee | Submit_button_x | 38 | Submit_button_y | 23 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | One such argument could be that if a driver notices the driving conditions are becoming more dangerous or that a traffic light is coming up, a rational driver may put the conversation on pause, thus eliminating the dual- task interference. Moreover, the fact that the participants were behind a display takes away the inherent caution they would have while operating a car. Furthermore, the experiment utilized random displays of traffic lights. In reality, traffic lights can be spotted from a fair distance away and do not necessitate such quick reactions as required in the experiment. The lack of experience of driving is also apparent in these participants, as they are all undergrads who have been driving for only a couple of years . In addition, the use of the pursuit rotor task is less than compelling as it poorly reflects a real- world scenario. Pursuit rotor tasks test finer motor skills to simply follow a dot with a joystick rather than actually driving a car with a wheel and pedals that requires lane changes and constantly checking blind spots. | name | Advaita Rao- Sharma | Submit_button_x | 26 | Submit_button_y | 24 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The results obtained by Strayer and Johnson do not necessarily imply that cell phone use while driving increases the risk of having an accident. For example, in the second experiment, participants were asked to perform the simulated driving task on both an easy course and a difficult course. On each course, the participants were asked to perform a single task or a dual-task (shadowing or word generation). The results demonstrated that tracking error increased when participants used the cell phone to perform the word-generation task but not when they performed the shadowing task. From this, Strayer and Johnston concluded that the disruptive effects of cell-phone conversations while driving are due to the diversion of attention from driving, which increases the risk of an accident. However, it must be noted that because performance was not measured in single-task shadowing conditions, it is possible that the differences in dual-task interferences were due to differences in the difficulty of the two tasks, which makes the conclusions drawn from the results less sound. Drivers may only be willing to use their cell-phones if the driving tasks are not perceived to be difficult. In addition, these experiments were conducted under simulated conditions, which may not accurately reflect the true conditions of talking on the cell-phone while driving. This calls into question the ecological validity of the results. For instance, in the simulation, a joystick was used to maneuver the cursor on a computer display and keep it aligned as closely as possible to a moving target. This does not necessarily reflect true road conditions. It is also uncertain whether we are using our working memory and reasoning skills in phone-conversation while driving. Our attention may in fact be more focused on the road than on the conversation itself. In fact, there are some arguments that an “auditory-verbal-vocal” conversation should not interfere substantially with a “visual-spatial-manual” driving task.  | name | Hope Kim | Submit_button_x | 28 | Submit_button_y | 19 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I'd say that ecological validity is the main concern here. The task was simulated, and it didn't really replicate driving perfectly. Furthermore, the task was novel and likely more difficult for most participants than driving is, likely resulting in more errors. Also, they probably weren't as motivated to perform well on the test as they would be if they were actually driving, where your skills are constantly being evaluated by other drivers in the form of honks and lurid stares.
 | name | Brent Harrison | Submit_button_x | 29 | Submit_button_y | 17 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The pursuit tracking task is a limited simulation of driving. It only asks participants to “drive” by aligning the cursor with a target, which does not take into account different driving scenarios such as shifting lanes, navigating through a busy intersection, avoiding bikers when turning etc. All of these scenarios introduce a multitude of factors that divert attention (checking mirror, avoiding other cars, watching out for pedestrians and bikers), which are more complicated than fixed attention on a target. The joystick set-up with the “brake” button at the thumb position fails to replicate the actual driving posture, which uses a steering wheel and braking with one foot. The study needs to at least confirm that there are no significant differences between the joystick manipulation and the eye-hand-foot coordination required in the real world. 
The lab environment reduces the stress of actual driving, so that participants need not worry about their lives during the course of the experiment. There is also no mention about the effect of driving experience; the subjects are in their twenties with what can be assumed to be various levels of driving experience and tendency to talk on the phone. The subjects are not matched in that sense. The sample should be larger to include middle-age drivers as well.  | name | Phuong-Nghi Pham | Submit_button_x | 29 | Submit_button_y | 17 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The experiment does not actually reflect real-world conditions. Because they were not actually driving and therefore their lives were not in danger, they probably had less motivation to perform well or efficiently. Additionally, as mentioned in the discussion section, people have conversations in the car with other present passengers all the time. I think it is necessary to have an experiment in which these two situations (cell phone conversation or in person conversation) are compared in order to determine results. 
 | name | Alexis Sinclair  | Submit_button_x | 33 | Submit_button_y | 17 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | If I were a libertarian trying to argue against this paper I would have three points: 1.) The authors state that the number of people using cell phones while driving is very high and that doing so is dangerous. If this number has skyrocketed in recent years though, why haven't we seen a significant increase in the frequency of accidents? 2.) The tracking task has poor ecological validity for driving and the use of the red/green lights is particularly flawed. The task involved tracking a randomly moving target, but when driving the road is not random. The path of the road is predictable and we can see it coming. Similarly stop lights are predictable. They don't just pop up out of nowhere. 3.) If the attentional hypothesis is correct, then talking to people in your own car would have the same risk as talking to somebody on the phone. If we make talking on the phone illegal, then would we also have to make talking at all while driving illegal? | name | Matthew Bonomo | Submit_button_x | 27 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea |       Presuming this is in regards to their 2001 article Driven to Distraction, my main criticism would be the tenuous link between performance on the pursuit task and actual driving performance. Given the theory that the performance of practiced tasks begins to resemble automatic processing over time, or becomes automatized (Galotti, 90), using the pursuit task, which the subjects had minutes to become acquainted with, doesn’t map on to driving, which the subjects presumably have years of experience with. With driving, if it is automatized, it requires less attention and the attention “drain” that comes from a cognitively engaging task like talking on a cellphone is less debilitating. In this sense, the experiment lacks ecological validity.
      The connection between the pursuit task and driving is weak in other ways. In particular, the use of break button operated by the hand instead of a brake pedal operated by the foot, the use of joystick rather than a steering wheel, and the following of a target rather following road rules seem to lack an effectual relationship to driving. While the red/green color use is cute and evokes traffic lights, the random appearances of these repeated stimuli don’t quite match actual conditions on the road. In addition, there may be a sense of urgency and awareness encountered in actual driving that can’t be duplicated in a lab. 
     Other than issues of ecological validity, I would like to see the decrease in reaction time during the radio dual task explored further. Anecdotally speaking, we are taught in fencing that focusing behind your opponent, rather than at them, helps you react more quickly to their attacks; perhaps there is something about divided attention that makes you react more quickly with automated tasks (such as parrying and driving). If I were more rabidly political in this scenario, I might even make a claim that being mildly engaged by a cellphone situation (though this a leap from the radio control) might increase my reaction time to events on the road. I doubt anyone would this claim as truth, but while researchers test out the possibility the state might hold off from hastily passing cellphone restriction laws.
 | name | Katerina von Campe | Submit_button_x | 30 | Submit_button_y | 22 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | 
The ecological validity of this experiment weak. It is unreasonable to conclude from this experiment that cell phone usage while driving increases the risks of having an accident, based on an experiment where the participants are not actually driving a car or a car simulation that parallels real driving. Furthermore, their rationale that the potential risk of accidents may be due to the fact that the person on the line (not the driver) doesn’t know the current driving conditions is flawed. In cases where harm may come to the driver, the driver would probably drop the phone and attempt to focus his attention on driving, the same way when a lot of drivers are lost, they turn down the music to focus their attention on finding the correct directions. This is due to the fact that the driving task given to the participants doesn’t pose the same risks as that driving in real life poses, which could account for the possible differences in measures taken to ensure proper driving.  In addition, the easy course vs the difficult course data portrays a narrative that suggests that the driving mistakes have more to do with the difficulty of the course than the diversion of attention.  If a significant amount of mistakes were made in the easy course under the word generation task as seen in the difficulty task, change in cognitive focus would stand out as the sole factor for the mistakes rather than difficulty. Perhaps more cognitive effort was demanded by the difficult course in comparison to the easy course. Consequently, when not enough cognitive effort is given to the difficult course due to the distraction (cell phone conversation), it has more negative effects then on the easy course.  Based on this, the experiments should be altered and the conclusion should be reassessed. 
 | name | Benaias Esayeas  | Submit_button_x | 22 | Submit_button_y | 23 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | It's possible that the methods used in the experiments wouldn't apply to actual driving situations. There aren't any negative consequences in the experiment if someone misses the red light, but in real life, missing a red light might mean losing your life. Thus, when actually driving, people could be paying more attention on the road than they would during the experiment. In addition, in experiment 2, the participants had to come up with words that start with the last letter of the world that the speaker came up with. That seems like a much more difficult task than an actual phone conversation and would use more cognitive processes. Also, it might be harder for a person to use a joystick/button versus a steering wheel and brakes. Both a steering wheel and brakes are much larger than the joystick, so there's less chance that the participant would make a mistake if their hands shook.(Btw, what is Strayer and Johnson--1976? I thought the study took place in 2001). | name | Annie Chen | Submit_button_x | 45 | Submit_button_y | 25 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | From an ecological validity perspective, the experiment done by Strayer and Johnston could be argued to have not been a true enough replication of real life events to conclude that cell phone use increases driving accidents. That is to say when actually driving, people may focus more on the road despite being on the phone compared to the simulator used in the experiment. Participants in the experiment knew that a delayed reaction would not result in any real harm and therefore may have not been as focused as they would if they were driving a real car while on the phone.  | name | Christopher Roll | Submit_button_x | 22 | Submit_button_y | 22 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The studies done by Strayer and Johnston show that participants who talked on the phone while driving were twice as likely to miss a simulated traffic signal than those who were not talking on the phone. Further, even if they did react to the traffic signals, they were slower than participants in the control group. The results did not change for "handheld or hands-free cell-phone users". Lastly, participants were asked to drive and perform a "word-generation" task (if the person on the other end of the phone said the word "mouse", the participant had to state a word that begins with the letter "e"). Participants in this group showed an increase in tracking error. However, other results showed that some cell phone use does not effect concentration levels. For example, listening to a book on tape did not effect participants ability to drive. So, would it be dangerous if a person listened to a voicemail at a red light? Or touched a button on his phone to see the time? Or what if a person answered a phone call and only listened to what the other person was saying? As shown by the results of this experiment, listening to someone else on the phone talk would be no different than listening to the radio or having a conversation with someone in the passengers seat. The government should not make cell phone use while driving illegal unless ALL aspects of cell phone use while driving are proven to be dangerous. The results of this experiment show that is not the case.  | name | Michael Riopel  | Submit_button_x | 12 | Submit_button_y | 23 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I could suggest that the experimenters designed a task that tests attention more than motor skills. By creating a phone conversation about the Clinton impeachment, they are requiring the subjects to involve themselves in an activity requiring more recall and perhaps critical thinking than the average phone conversation might entail. Additionally, on the second experiment, the difference between the single task and the shadowing and generative tasks became much more pronounced in the "difficult" condition, suggesting that multi-tasking becomes more of a problem as the difficulty of an activity increases. The pursuit rotor task is completely new to the subjects, and they have only a "warm-up" phase to learn the task. Drivers have often spent years becoming familiar with the task of driving, which given the trend above, suggests that cell phone use in the car would cause negligible additional danger. None of this is to mention the fact that the joystick task carries none of the gravity of driving, and the subjects have little need to prioritize one task over the other. While driving the priorities would be clear, and the resources of attention would be devoted to driving safely. | name | Jack Malague | Submit_button_x | 29 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | There are several reasons to advocate for the experiment's lack of proper method. The first one could be the lab setting as the simulation is obviously different from the actual driving experience. The use of joystick instead of a steering wheel creates complications as some people possibly are introduced to using joystick for the first time. These same people would feel much more relaxed, and almost reflexive, about their command of the steering wheel. Another issue is the discrepancy between cognitive processes involved with an actual phone conversation and ones supposed by the experiments to be equivalent of a conversation. In experiment 1, discussing either the then-ongoing Clinton presidential impeachment or the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee bribery scandal usually require more attention to detail and retrieving memory as opposed to a conversation about one person’s whereabouts or how their day have been. In experiment 2, asking to generate words potentially requires more cognitive processes than a usual phone conversation. From the viewpoint of multiple-resource models of divided attention, the suggestions done by the results are highly questionable. The last point to consider is the researchers’ own biases towards the issue; which is observable in their out of scope researches about the legislations and countries that ban cell phone usage and driving.  | name | Yagmur Idil Ozdemir | Submit_button_x | 23 | Submit_button_y | 20 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I would argue that parts of the experiments used to simulate a phone conversation (i.e the word-generation task) were more difficult and attention-consuming than holding a natural conversation. To be given a word then required to find another word that begins with the same letter that said word ends with calls for more thinking than engaging in conversation. It seems logical that subjects paid less attention to the premier task. However, with the shadowing dual task condition, where subjects with a handheld device repeated what was said to them over the phone (better following the pace of an actual conversation) their accuracy results did not differ significantly from the single task of driving.  | name | Sophia Lesperance | Submit_button_x | 25 | Submit_button_y | 18 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | Strayer and Johnston's experiments tested people's motor skills when their attention was divided. Data was collected for variables including talking on a handheld or hands-free cell phone, listening to music or an audiobook, and driving easy and difficult courses. Results showed that participants were more prone to making driving mistakes when they talked on their cell phones, regardless of whether they were holding the phone or not. Listening to the radio apparently had little effect on participants' motor skills, whether they were simply listening to music or paying attention to a book. Driving a more difficult course resulted in more mistakes than driving an easier course. 
Although these experiments tested many possible variables in order to narrow down the main source of interference, there are some potential problems. First, results could vary depending on the types of conversation people have on their phones. Strayer and Johnston asked the participants to discuss current political issues, which could have been a task that required much attention for those who were not well-acquainted with politics or those who were very passionate about it. In contrast, most average conversations people have while they are driving are about everyday topics — such as what errands to run — that would not require as much attention (and arguably less attention than that required to memorize information from a book). If participants had little trouble driving while listening to an audiobook, they might experience just as little interference when talking about simple things on the phone. Second, the experiment that involved both easy and difficult courses showed that there was barely any difference between the results from performing a single task and performing a dual task when participants drove an easy course. The results were almost just as close for the difficult course, but higher as a group. This offers the conclusion that perhaps cell phones are not the biggest problem, and people just prone to making driving mistakes when road conditions are rough. | name | Amber Liu | Submit_button_x | 0 | Submit_button_y | 0 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | The results of this study can't be used to pass laws that restrict cell phone use while driving because their methods aren't ecologically valid. The participants of the study were using joysticks to simulate driving, which significantly reduces the stress upon the participants. Actual drivers are more stressed out than when driving because their lives are on the line. Hence, the participants will be less likely to pay attention to their driving because there aren't any negative consequences when they do mess up while paying attention to their cell phones. Therefore, these results cannot be used to conclude that cell phone use while driving causes drivers to have more accidents. | name | Alifayaz Abdulzahir | Submit_button_x | 9 | Submit_button_y | 27 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html | 
textarea | I would argue that Strayer and Johnston's study had extremely poor ecological validity. People will inevitably try much harder to complete a task (such as driving without dying) when their life depends on it. As the driving stimulation could not replicate the risks of crashing a car, the observed results may have only occurred in a low-pressure situation. Future experiments could have offered a significant monetary prize for driving the best (perhaps only one participant will be financially compensated for their time), and see if the results differ. | name | Annalisa Donat | Submit_button_x | 27 | Submit_button_y | 8 | success | http://www.amherst.edu/~mdschulkind/firstclass_thanks.html |