really going to be two stories today the
first is about what happens to your
brain when you try to do two things at
the same time both of which seems simple
but in combination can produce deadly
results the second story is about what
happens when you trade the technological
for the natural now we’re gonna start
with the first story but in preparation
for the second I want to give you a
little task what you see up here is a
task of creativity your task is to think
of these three words same tennis and
head and try to think of one word that
goes with all three that one word might
be part of a word compound it might be
conceptually similar but I guarantee you
that there is one word that joins all
three of these together we’ll come back
to that one a little bit later I’ll give
you some time to think about it over the
past twenty seven years I’ve dedicated
my life to trying to understand how we
use our brain to navigate through the
environment that we live in I work with
pedestrians drivers and pilots to try to
understand how our vision and attention
systems help us move about this very
complex world that we live in and for
the last 17 years I’ve been dedicated to
a very specific issue and that issue has
been the issue of distracted driving
because as we move around our
environment there’s probably nothing
more important than driving 94% of
crashes on our roadways today are due to
human error and understanding how our
brain works in that very special
environment is critical to our safety
health and well-being now there’s no
question I think everyone understands
that distraction is killing us when we
think about all of the fatalities on the
roadways in the United States we start
to begin to understand why our brain is
so important we lose about 40,000 people
every year on our roads in the United
States and there’s certainly not the
safest in the world amongst
industrialized countries and there are
some estimates by groups like the
National Safety Council that one-quarter
of those people are dying because people
are using their phones while driving
and you don’t need to see this yourself
though you might have to really
understand how compelling these devices
are this is a picture that one of my
students sent me and then she quickly
wrote back and said oh no Mike my
boyfriend took it while I was driving I
didn’t take the picture but you see
someone here that’s that’s engaged in
kind of a paradox right this is someone
who’s doing something very dangerous
they’re riding a motorcycle and they’re
doing something equally dangerous
they’re doing it in hands-free and ice
cream mode and at the same time this
individual is wearing a helmet and they
have a safety strap around the rucksack
so in one case they’re being safe and on
the other they’re being wildly unsafe
and I think understanding this and how
compelling these devices are is really
critical for all of us as we’re trying
to move around a world safely now what’s
interesting about this is this really
isn’t a new research problem for people
like me in fact the first studies of
this particular issue using phones while
driving was published in 1969 which
means the advisor and a grad student
were probably doing this work when I was
born in 1967 what that means is that
we’ve been doing research on this issue
for over 50 years and when I tell you
today and make the claim that using your
phone while you’re driving in any manner
hands-free touching it texting just
talking is at best equivalent to driving
drunk I’m not saying it based upon a few
studies I’m saying it based upon
numerous studies and numerous
methodologies that we’ve been using over
50 years two of the best studies that I
think really illustrate how much of a
problem this is are what are called
epidemiological studies there are
studies where people were actually in
crashes in one case the crashes led to a
visit to the emergency room in another
case it did not the crashes were in
different countries these studies were
done by different researchers but the
bottom line is across both studies they
found exactly the same thing you are
four times or more more likely to be in
a crash if you’re using a phone in any
manner it doesn’t matter in this study
if the phone was being used handheld or
hands-free people were more likely to be
in a crash in fact than a drunk driver
is
to be in a crash and again keep in mind
these are two studies done by two
different groups of people at different
points in time with actual crash victims
now speaking of drunk driving if like my
friend Dave Strayer you had a driving
simulator in your laboratory and you
brought people in at the University of
Utah and got them drunk and when I used
to talk about this
I used to say there on the utah campus
so they’re only a little drunk and i
gave a talk there last year and dave’s
dave raised his hand and said no no they
were really drunk i said okay so if you
were to bring people in and get them
really drunk and then have your to have
them drive in your driving simulator and
then bring them back and have them drive
sober and while they’re driving you give
them some events they’d have to react to
like a suddenly stopping car you would
find that people drive better when
they’re drunk
think about that for a second people
tried better when they’re drunk the
drunk drivers knew that they were
impaired and knew that they were being
watched and so what they made sure to do
is try to be as vigilant as possible and
when cars stopped in front of them they
were slower but they tended to crush the
brake pedal in response in order to stop
the drivers those same drivers when they
came back and they were talking
hands-free on a phone to sum them that
wasn’t in that vehicle with them drove
through four vehicles without even
noticing it and when they were asked
afterwards how did you drive they said
Oh much better when I was drunk what
about that car you drove through no
recollection whatsoever of that event
because it turns out it takes your brain
to drive we’ve used a device that’s used
to measure older adult attention which
is how I really got started in this is
looking at older adults and that device
tells us that the attention of someone
that’s on a phone is so tapped out that
they are at best four times slower to
see and understand what’s happening in
that environment around them four times
is slow in fact when I do this task with
a 19 year old they look like a fighter
pilot but when I give them a fans free
cellular conversation they look like a
seven-year-old adult with Alzheimer’s
disease in Australia they use this task
to screen older drivers and that profile
would lead to that person probably
losing their license the reason why this
is so hard is because your brain just
doesn’t have enough resources to do
multiple things at the same time I know
multitasking Xin
we’ve got some incredibly bright young
adults here today they’re gonna be
talking about some amazing things and in
the back of their head right now they’re
thinking yeah but I’ve been doing this
since I was four so my brain is totally
different right no the problem is all of
our brains are the same and with
training they’re not getting any better
in fact they’re getting worse when you
look at the brain of an individual
that’s trying to talk and look at the
world around them at the same time you
see something very compelling this is a
image of the brain it’s the back of your
brain this is occipital cortex primary
visual processing area and that darker
bit there that red bit that’s
essentially where blood is flowing we’re
where neurons are active means your
brains doing stuff and we can use this
technique to understand which part of
our brain is active and which isn’t on
the Left panel you see the brain of
someone that’s been asked to look at a
traffic scene and just look at a traffic
scene and try to process it and primary
visual processing area is lighting up it
looks like they’re doing something then
when that same person is asked to look
at that traffic scene but then listen to
some simple sentences and because
they’re going to be asked some simple
true and false questions after that
they’re not asked to give those
questions and answers till later just
listen when that person listens now that
brain region turns off by 40% the region
of the brain that’s responsible for
seeing the world starts to deactivate
and regions of that are responsible in
temporal areas for listening start to
activate in other words your brain
doesn’t have enough resources to go
around to do both things at the same
time and the real-world implication of
this is incredibly scary I want you to
imagine that you have a child playing on
a sidewalk in an area like right here in
Kansas City maybe a grandchild or a son
or a daughter or a sibling what you
would want for a driver driving down
your residential neighborhood is that
they would scan on the right side of the
road for your kid playing on the
sidewalk or maybe a car getting ready to
back out into the intersection you want
them to scan on the left to make sure
that there are no sudden events like
cars running in front of them at
unexpected times and like my grandmother
taught me to drive you would want them
scanning the environment as far ahead
not just the car in front of them but as
many cars away as they could see and
what you’re seeing here is
I movement patterns of someone doing
just that that larger box because those
little dots there I trackers so we can
see where people are looking that larger
box is where an attentive driver is
scanning for hazards where your kids
playing where cars might be stopping
where someone might come across the
intersection unexpectedly and here’s
what happens with that tapped out brain
when someone’s asked to have a
conversation with someone that’s not in
the vehicle with them in vehicle
conversations are different because as
we all know when you’re driving in a
complicated environment like under
Bartle Hall here in Kansas City the
conversation stops right but when you’re
talking to someone that’s not in the car
with you now because the brain is trying
to allocate resources strategically
they’re now scanning a region of space
that is about the width of the steering
wheel and about the distance of the
front bumper of the car that means when
your son or daughter your brother or
sister your niece or nephew your
grandchild runs off of the sidewalk into
the street they won’t even be looking at
the right place until that person is
right under the front bumper of their
car and this helps explain while we’re
seeing this huge rise in fatalities and
while we have crashes where people were
are completely not understanding why
they missed it because it seems like
they’re seeing everything but they’re
actually not now I could go on and on
because we’ve been doing this for 50
years this last year we actually did a
study of all of the research that’s out
there on distraction generally looking
at the effect of distraction on driving
and in that study and since then there’s
another hundred studies that have come
out we looked at 342 studies that cover
about sixteen hundred and eight measures
of distraction and about 20,000 people
I’m gonna show up a slightly complicated
graph but here’s what I want you to get
about it what we did was we asked a
simple question did the study show that
there was a negative effect on
performance driving performance for that
distraction no effect because science
sometimes doesn’t find things or the
distraction actually improve performance
and here’s the bottom line when you’re
texting almost every single time we
measure it we find that texting reduces
driving performance but even nine times
that’s that little thing in the middle
there even
9 times we didn’t show texting affected
driving performance because science
isn’t perfect sometimes we don’t find
things but when we look at hands held
versus hands-free that larger piece of
the pie on the middle and outer rings 81
percent of the time plus or minus half a
percent we find that using a phone
reduces your ability to drive safely and
it doesn’t matter if it’s hands held or
hands-free the bottom line is we’ve been
studying this for a decade and we’ve
done hundreds of studies I’m not just
saying this because I think it’s true
I’m saying this because the vast
preponderance of evidence says that
we’re all putting each other at grave
risk when we’re using our phones to
drive down the road and say hey where
you at again the National Safety Council
estimates of the 40,000 people that died
this last year and by the way that’s an
increase and we’ve been increasing for
the last two years and we’re probably
going to increase again this year and
that’s despite the fact that our cars
are safer with automatic braking and
stability control and airbags or roads
are safer because the engineers are
designing them better our emergency
services get to a crash faster and once
you get to the hospital you’re more
likely to live despite all those safety
improvements more people are dying
because of ubiquity of phones in cars
and a quarter the people 10,000 people
that died probably died because someone
was using a phone why do we do it why do
we do it you know this is what’s really
fascinated me I was a brain scientist
who really studied why the brain was
working but I immediately when I started
this work thought to myself this is
crazy why are people doing it and I
really started to study this problem and
really the bottom line is our brain is
wired for smart phones you’re looking at
fMRI again but now I’m going to show you
some fMRI images from areas of the brain
that we call the dopaminergic system
this is the reward system now I can see
everyone so raise your hand if you love
folding laundry please raise your hand
who loves folding laundry oh I’ve got
three people this is amazing all right
great
usually it takes about 500 and I can get
one so that’s good
if I were to ask the audience you know
even if you don’t love folding laundry
give me one word that describes how you
feel when you’re done folding a basket
of laundry
about it for a second do laundry it’s
it’s her in the basket you walk by it on
Sunday mmm Monday mmm Tuesday Wednesday
finally for laundry how you feel at that
moment you probably say yeah I feel
accomplished I feel like I did something
I have a sense of accomplishment you
feel good and what you’re feeling there
is this dopaminergic system this reward
system that is designed to get you to
fold that darn laundry the next time it
rewards you to reinforce behaviors to
get you to repeat them and what this
image is showing this is the image of
the brain on Facebook because what it’s
showing is the dopaminergic system kicks
in big-time whenever we do something
social and what’s really interesting
those little bars down there the red
bars and the blue bars big bar means
more activity that’s the bar of someone
that’s actually talking about themselves
versus someone that’s just talking in
other words we love to talk about
ourselves so this is why Facebook is so
popular because you get to like things
and tell people what your opinion are is
and where you’ve been and Instagram your
lunch so our brain is wired for this
kind of stuff and there are smart people
where I grew up in Silicon Valley
they’re designing these things to
attract and grab your attention whether
you want it to or not because that’s the
business model when we ask people to put
these things down like we do for
journalism students at the University of
Kansas for 24 to 48 hours these are the
kind of reactions you get and I think it
tells you something about the deep
connection of our brains of this stuff
people look addicted and in fact we’ve
done some work on addiction and I will
tell you there are some people that are
legitimately addicted to their
smartphones I had one young woman when I
gave this talk say I lost my phone for a
while and I felt like I was missing an
arm I was handicapped but what if I told
you that the reason we do this is
because your brain is in fact pulling a
trick on you we fool ourselves in lots
of different ways we think of our brain
is a really complex supercomputer but
it’s not we’ve got billions of neurons
and trillions of connections multiple
areas dedicated to processing speech and
and music and love we can build tools to
go into space but I’d say if you study
it long enough it’s a lot more like this
it does a few things really well but
everything it doesn’t do very well it
sort of disguises from you and I need to
convince you of this fact because I
believe your life is at risk if you
don’t believe me when you drive down the
road you think you see everything we
call perception the grand illusion
because you think you have this 180
degree full-color motion based
high-definition 3d dimensional panorama
available to you at all times
but everyone hold your fists out at
arm’s length look at your fists see your
fists that’s about how much information
you’re processing in the visual world at
any one time you’re driving down the
road and you think you see the woman on
the Left get right getting ready to walk
in the street in the SUV and the people
stopping but really you have this little
tiny window that you’re sort of moving
around and you’re sort of building up an
image of what you see you don’t see
everything at the same time I’m gonna
convince you of this I’m going to show
you some work we did with actual drivers
driving in in Chicago so we took
pictures of driving scenes and we asked
folks to look at these driving scenes
and what we did was we manipulated the
driving scene so I want you to look at
this as a driver and what I’m gonna do
is I’m gonna actually change something
in the scene and you have to just raise
your hand when you spot it and I’m
running out of time so we’ll move on
here we go just spot the change in the
driving scene and raise your hand when
you see it drivers uh-oh well I’ve got
one good I’ll drive home with you that’s
good two or three we are limited on time
so I’ll give you a couple more seconds
okay great good and you also like
folding laundry it’s like a double win
that’s fantastic okay if you’ve looked
at that 50 mile an hour sign on the left
a few times take a look at it again do
you see that 20 story apartment building
right next to it that’s appearing and
disappearing there it is there it goes
there it is there it goes everyone see
it now all right now you’re saying
yourself that’s not fair you tricked me
and I did trick you I tricked you
because I started talking to you about
driving and your attention system is
limited so it immediately went into a
mode of being efficient and said I’m
gonna look for driving things and so it
looked at that car right in front of you
and you said well nothing happened in
there
so then it looked at the car that was
nearby and you don’t see anything
happening there
moved your eyes looked at the sign you
didn’t see anything happening the sign
is kind of big so you looked at it a
couple of times and you didn’t see
anything and so eventually you probably
looked at that 50 mile an hour sign now
here’s what you need to know that first
thing you looked at that red car
disappeared your brain can track about 4
objects at any one time we’ve spent
billions of dollars US military and
militaries around the world to spend
billions of dollars trying to improve
situational awareness of pilots and
others to get them to see and pay
attention to more than four things it’s
a hardwired limit the other thing it
needs to notice is even though you’re
paying attention that 50 mile an hour
sign and that change was right next to
it you didn’t see it because you pay
attention to objects not regions of
space and it wasn’t until I told you
about that building that you noticed it
now you’ll notice it every single time
there’s a cure there’s a cure and
there’s good news the good news is all
we really need to do is put down our
devices for a little bit and go outside
I want to talk very briefly about some
research that I’ve done with the
beautiful and talented dr. roof an
actually and some colleagues at the
University of Utah looking at what
happens when people put down their
devices and go outside for some period
of time this is research that’s been
covered in great places like backpacker
magazine which means you get to hang out
with backpackers it’s in been in recent
of recent book called the nature fix and
they see what we did was we took people
out into nature on long hikes and gave
them these kinds of tasks you’ve had
some time to think about it what’s the
word the words match tennis match match
and same are related the head of a match
now these aren’t easy so we gave these
to people knowing they wouldn’t solve
very many of them and when we did this
and had people go out and hike in the
Rockies and do really interesting things
what we saw is that the ability to solve
these creative problems win up by 50
percent we never see increases of 50
percent in anything in a psychological
science research study and yet we saw
that here and it’s been replicated in
other studies we’ve recently replicated
it with teams working together in office
environments versus outdoor environments
and we still see that same improvement
it’s also interesting is when you go
outside you become more emotionally
intelligent you become more sensitive to
the emotions of others because the brain
regions that are being
distracted and that are being stimulated
by nature actually help make you
emotionally smarter we took people out
and gave them pikes and then had them do
these kinds of weird word things where
you say you smell bad and pleasant tone
of voice or it didn’t match up and ask
them what the person was saying people
are a lot of more emotionally in tune
when they’d been outside we had those
workers work in teams outside
they laughed twice as much they
collaborated more they came to solutions
faster and the team was happier with
those solutions than the people that
were in the office environments I think
that part of the reason for this is
because our phones are making us a
little dumb and a little insensitive the
other doctor actually thinks that it’s
probably because nature is a really
pleasant place to be and it’s good for
your brain and the real answer is
probably someplace in the middle but you
know I think middles okay in an era that
I’d loved to how tank said you know it
wasn’t your social network outside and
one day in an era where our social
network used to be outside where four
generations ago a child might play in a
very large area of space and over time
with subsequent generations that area’s
space is shrunk down to a very small
region maybe going back outside is
something we all need attention is a
gift that you give to yourself and it’s
a gift that you give to people around
you and I appreciate the attention that
you have given me here today thank you
very much [Applause]