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BOB HIRSHON (host):
How texting saps focus. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
Overall, humans are pretty good drivers, even when we’re stressed out.
ROBERT WUNDERLICH (Texas Transportation Institute):
We’ve developed some mechanisms over our evolution that help us compensate when we’re doing one task but something else takes our attention.
HIRSHON:
But texting short-circuits this ability, according to Robert Wunderlich, director of the Texas A&M Center for Transportation Safety. He and his colleagues write in Scientific Reports that when volunteers were forced to concentrate on math problems or stressful emotional issues during a simulated driving exercise, their brains automatically corrected for minor mistakes.
WUNDERLICH:
The result is that the car goes straight.
HIRSHON:
But texting led to swerving in and out of lanes.
WUNDERLICH:
Texting overwhelms our capability to automatically compensate for dividing our attention.
HIRSHON:
I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.