Individual Differences in Cognition as Predictors of Driving Performance

The present study empirically examined the role of individual differences in working memory capacity and executive attention on driving performance. Forty participants first completed a series of tasks measuring working memory capacity and executive attention. They then completed simulated driving routes while concurrently engaging a secondary task. The secondary (distractor) task was a 20-questions game in which participants were required to ask twenty “yes-or-no” questions to guess the experimenter’s word as a way to simulate natural conversation. Participants were randomly assigned to complete the secondary task by either calling or texting. Results showed a significant interaction of distraction condition and allocation phase on the number of lane deviations. Participants in the texting condition had significantly poorer driving outcomes during distraction compared to those in the calling condition. Both theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.