hands-free phone poses no less danger than a hand-held one

[mattbiernat]

hands-free phone poses no less danger than a hand-held one

well it is time to retract the ban on hand held phones. afterall it makes no difference whatsoever whether you are holding your phone or having a head set.

the problem is not your hands but your brain

and just fine people who have problems with their brains (reckless drivers).

RER: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/healt ... f=research

[beGi]

I really don't like to do this, but I told you that months ago...

[Marin85]

Actually I´m surprised that they found out this so late Firstly, it is more or less intuitively clear and secondly, there are quite a lot researches in psychology on attention distracting factors, particularly that the brain has limited capability of handling incoming information for tiny periods of time (i.e. enough to cause a car accident) due to "energy supply" (!). In fact, any kind of somewhat reasonable conversation consumes a good amount of energy, so there is very limited possibility for the brain to pay attention to another information flow for short time intervals during that conversation.

[beGi]

...the brain has limited capability of handling incoming information for tiny periods of time (i.e. enough to cause a car accident) due to "energy supply"(!)...

Brain is n.1 energy consumer in human body, and has limited resources and capabilities, but I have never heard hypothesis that that is caused by low energy supply (!?)...

Is that your own assumption or you have read it somewhere?

Can you be more specific, please? Or provide reference if possible?

Thanks

[mattbiernat]

actually during exercise i think it is muscles that use most energy but that is besides the point. having a hands free device does not make a difference and that's why laws should be changed.

[Marin85]

...but I have never heard hypothesis that that is caused by low energy supply (!?)...

I think the point is rather limited energy supply for short intervals of time. I heard about this from a friend of mine who is writing his master work in psychology on a similar topic. He has done a lot of experimenting on the way how human attention works for shorter and longer time intervals and especially in the range of short intervals of time there can be really huge differences if one observes different (short) lengths of time intervals. He based part of his work on other similar experiments already done and some other researches dealing with this topic. They all mention about the way human brain gets energy allocated but they don´t seem to deal with that specific point really any further, rather with attention distracting factors etc. Also, there wasn´t any background from a biological standpoint provided (like energy activity on cellular level in brain etc.). I actually found the "energy point" even more interesting than the rest of his work because it seems very well explanatory, I guess research on that topic would involve some more biology and probably also even some physics ("energy is all around"). I´ll ask him if he could provide some references on that topic, it´s definitely very interesting and sounds as a good explanation of plenty of phenomena. Also thanks for your interest, I´ll PM you when I have a response from him.

Marin

[beGi]

I´ll ask him if he could provide some references on that topic, it´s definitely very interesting and sounds as a good explanation of plenty of phenomena. Also thanks for your interest, I´ll PM you when I have a response from him.

That would be very nice...

Thanks