Date of Award

Summer 2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Amit Almor

Abstract

We report the results from a driving simulator paradigm we developed to test the effects of simple verbal tasks on simultaneous driving performance. A total of 74 undergraduate students participated in two experiments in which they controlled a car using the steering wheel to track a moving target. The dependent measure, overall deviation from target, was continuously recorded. Experiment 1 (E1) tested tracking performance during slow and fast target speeds under conditions involving either no verbal input or output (Absent), passive listening to spoken prompts via headphones (Listen), or responding to the spoken prompts (Respond). Experiment 2 (E2) was similar except that participants read written prompts overlain over the driving simulator screen (Read) instead of listening to spoken prompts. Performance in both experiments was worse during fast compared to slow target speeds, and worst overall during Respond conditions. Performance differences between verbal task conditions showed only in the fast speed conditions in E1, and in all speed conditions in E2. Additionally, time-course analysis revealed steadily deteriorating tracking performance as participants prepared to speak and began speaking, and steadily improving performance as they spoke. Overall, these results are consistent with load-based theories of multitasking performance and show that language production, and, to a lesser extent, language comprehension tap resources also used for driving. More generally, our paradigm provides a useful tool for measuring the dynamical changes in driving performance during verbal tasks due to the rapidly changing resource requirements of language production and comprehension.

Rights

© 2025, Jonathan Cheshire Rann

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS