بررسی تاثیر محتوا و سطح دشواری تکلیف شنیداری کلامی بر عملکرد حافظه کوتاه مدت در رانندگی با شبیه‌ساز

Background and aims:Traffic safety has been influenced by mobile phone induced distractionwhile driving and related car crashes. The effects of audio-verbal tasks on driving performances likebreak reaction time, hazard detection time and deviation from lane have been studied by manyresearchers. But driver’s audio-verbal performance in has not received more attention. The effect ofdriving task on conversation task and vice versa can be determined by evaluating conversationperformance and can explain how drivers prioritize two tasks.Methods: In this experimental study remembering of negative and positive words by 52 young (23t0 35 years old) male participants while driving a simulator was examined.Results:Results revealed that Short-Term Memory (STM) performance is influenced by difficultylevel of audio task and road type. The Wilcoxon test for nonparametric paired data showed thatmean rank for remembered words in two-way roads is greater than one way roads and thisdifference is statistically significant. Also this test has performed for considering the effect ofword’s semantic content on STM performance and showed that there is no statistically significantdifference between remembered positive words and negative ones. Negative and significantcorrelation found between age and driving experience with remembering wordsConclusion:These findings shows that driver’s STM performance while driving is related to limitedcapacity of short-term memory in one hand and is influenced by driving circumstances like speedand road type on the other hand. More studies have suggested determining the effect of semanticcontent of auditory task on STM performance while driving.