Effects of phone type on driving and eye glance behaviour while text-messaging

This study examined whether phone interface - touch screen keyboard vs. numeric keypad - moderates the impact of sending and receiving text messages on simulated driving performance and eye glance behaviour. The high visual-manual demands of text messaging are known to degrade driving performance and these effects may be exacerbated by the absence of tactile cues when using a touch screen phone. Twenty-four participants (25-50 years) sent and received text messages on either a touch screen or numeric keypad phone while driving a simulated freeway environment. As expected, compared to baseline, receiving and particularly sending text messages led to decrements in speed monitoring, decreased the amount of time spent looking at the forward roadway by up to 29%, and increased subjective workload. The performance degradations observed were similar across the numeric keypad and touch screen keyboard phones. Future research should further investigate the possible moderating effects of phone interface type on distraction using longer text message tasks and under more challenging driving conditions.