WEBVTT - Why Do We Turn Down the Radio When We're Lost? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:08.639 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:12.600 In the nineteen thirties, there was a bit of a 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:17.200 war over radios in cars. All legislators argued that car 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:22.640 radios were distracting and hazardous. The Radio Manufacturers Association countered 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.079 that passengers were more of a driver distraction than a 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:28.400 car radio. Listening to the radio, they claimed was safer 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:33.200 than even looking in the rearview mirror. But Illinois, Massachusetts, 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.440 New York, New Jersey, and Ohio legislatures all considered implementing 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:41.920 car radio fines, and in nineteen thirty five, Connecticut legislators 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:44.519 actually did introduce a bill that would have placed a 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:48.400 steep fine on radio installation of fifty dollars in nineteen 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:52.400 thirty five, which is over a thousand today. Others considered 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:57.720 making car radio installation a crime. It wasn't until nineteen 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.400 thirty nine, though, that anyone actually study weather a correlation 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:06.160 between car radios and car crashes existed. The Princeton Radio 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:10.080 Research Project determined that car radios played little no role 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:15.360 in car accidents. Skipping ahead to nineteen ninety nine, the 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.080 Society of Automotive engineers advised drivers to follow the fifteen 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.160 second rule. That is, they said a driver can be 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.720 distracted by an InCAR activity such as talking to passengers 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.600 or retrieving an item from the glove compartment four up 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.920 to fifteen seconds before the task becomes a visual distraction 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:36.800 and thus becomes unsafe. But if you're zipping along it's 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:39.679 say fifty five miles an hour, that's about eighty kilometers 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.200 per hour. Your car travels about the length of a 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.440 football field every five seconds. That's about three hundred and 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:48.320 sixty feet or one hundred and five meters, so you 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:53.720 cover three times that in fifteen seconds. Today, both the 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:57.280 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the US Department of 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.840 Transportation recommend that no InCAR activity take more than two 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:06.560 seconds less to become a dangerous distraction. At the same time, 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.440 would be surprised if a present day car rolled off 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.520 the assembly line without at least a radio installed. Most 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.679 new models have sleek digital audio systems. Today, two car 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.200 audio systems are considered to be among the low level distractions, 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:24.000 along with eating and drinking that combined are responsible for 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.200 distracting us about a third of the time that we 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:30.760 spend behind the wheel. That's not great, but activities like 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.760 texting while driving are even more serious because that distracts 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.640 you visually, physically, and cognitively all at the same time. 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.639 And further research has found that listening to music may 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:47.640 actually help drivers stay focused on the road during certain circumstances, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.640 like long trips on monotonous highways, although handling a media 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.160 player or touching the audio controls was found to be distracting. 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.600 So why then, do we so often turned down the 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.400 volume of the radio when we really need to concentrate 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:05.840 on driving, as say, when it comes to look for 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.079 an upcoming exit sign during heavy traffic, or when we're 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:13.120 approaching an unfamiliar destination. It has to do with the 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.760 demands on our ability to concentrate and the limitations of 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.200 the human brain. As it turns out, turning down the 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.440 radio to concentrate isn't strange at all. It's your brain's 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:29.519 natural reaction to the circumstances. The human brain has three parts. First, 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.000 there's a cerebrum, the largest part of the brain and 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.119 the part that controls your higher cognitive functions such as 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.120 language and emotions. Then there's the cerebellum, which controls your 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:43.360 muscle movements and balance. Finally, there's the brain stem, which 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.560 controls all of the body's automatic functions such as breathing, 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.440 as well as acting as the relay station between the 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:54.560 spinal cord and the cerebrum and cerebellum. As you go 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.880 through your day, you collect information about your environment through 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:02.680 your five primary sensory systems taste, hearing, smell, touch, and vision. 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.040 Each sensory system has its own sensory neurons and they 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.040 send reports to your central nervous system that is, your 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.880 spinal cord and brain about changes in your environment. The 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.320 brain combines all of this information and decides how to proceed. 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:23.320 That process is called encoding. The brain is constantly evaluating 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.320 what its primary task should be, the chief task that 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.200 the brain will focus on, and what its secondary task 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:32.360 or tasks should be, which are the concurrent tasks that 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.480 get less focus. The brain's ability to switch back and 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.200 forth between tasks is called attention switching, and it comes 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.120 with a price. When the brain switches its focus and 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.440 attention from one task to another, it's fast, but not instantaneous. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.720 Those fractions of a second spent toggling may slow down 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.880 your performance, including minor delays in your reaction times, and 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.360 when you're lost, that could mean the difference between seeing 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:04.040 or seeing the street sign that you need. People often 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.359 turn down the radio when driving in crowded urban areas, 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.120 looking for a specific address, or driving in dangerous conditions 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:15.200 like torrential rain or during a snowstorm because those activities 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.640 require more concentration than your typical drive. Turning the radio 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.159 down or off eliminates a task from the brains to 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.279 do list, shifting its focus to the most important task, 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:30.640 finding the way and getting there safely. Research shows that 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.159 at work, eleven percent of us right our to do 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:35.880 lists during meetings, and more than half of us check 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.720 email while we're on a phone call. Many of us 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.919 like to think of ourselves as expert multitaskers, and we 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:44.720 consider it the norm to perform two or more tasks 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.960 at the same time, or different tasks quickly back to back, 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:52.480 or to switch rapidly between two tasks. But despite our 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:56.440 pride in and fondness of multitasking, the brain isn't actually 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:00.760 built to multitask. Of course, every brain is different, but 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.719 speaking generally, give the brain one task and it's no problem. 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.640 Two tasks and the brain divides and conquers them more 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.000 than two tasks, though, and things change. With divided focus 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.320 and attention, the brain begins to perform less effectively and 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.560 is prone to making more errors. The human brain, it 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:25.160 turns out, doesn't have infinite resources, and it handles tasks sequentially. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.080 Yet it's able to switch from task to tasks so 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:32.360 rapidly that we think we're multitasking. And because we have 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.080 a limited capacity when it comes to focus and attention, 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.760 especially when we're concentrating hard, the brain has to choose 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:43.520 what information gets processed and encoded. For example, your brain 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.120 can handle either visual driving related tasks like looking for 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.680 an address or rocking out to the radio. When we 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.520 try to multitask, each goal competes for the brains available resources. 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.520 A multitasking creates a traffic jam, and in the end, 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.919 we form poorly on each task. As a result, we 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.880 overlook important information, we make errors, and we end up 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.200 remembering less information overall. When the brain is forced to 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.040 switch rapidly from task to task, it doesn't perform as 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:15.800 well as it does when it can focus on one 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.600 thing at a time. Multitasking increases our error rate by 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:23.160 as much as fifty percent and it doesn't speed things 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.520 up either. Trying to multitask doubles the amount of time 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:28.720 that it takes to perform each of the tasks at hand. 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.640 When you introduce a third task, the brain's prefrontal cortex, 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.440 which makes executive decisions, will discard the one it considers 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.760 the least important. It's got to do with the limits 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.520 of our sensory system, we tune out what our brain 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.080 determines to be of lesser importance. When we're lost, or 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.280 when we have to perform a driving task that we 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.800 don't do very often, like parallel parking, we edit our environment. 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:58.280 We stop listening to passenger conversation, our field of vision shrinks, 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:00.960 we turn down the radios of volume or turn it off, 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.400 all in an effort to throw our focus into vision 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:10.680 or spatial relationships, respectively. And that's great. When you're driving, 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.800 all your attention should be focused on the road. In 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.320 other environments, scientists suggest taking control of our focus and 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.360 attention consciously beginning and ending one task at a time. 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.400 This is called set shifting, a practice that's been shown 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.840 to result in fewer errors than multitasking. Other research suggests 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:32.480 devoting twenty minutes to one goal at a time before 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:40.320 consciously switching to the next. Today's episode is based on 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.360 the article why do we turn down the radio when 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.440 We're lost? On howtofworks dot com, written by Maria Tree Marquis. 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.600 Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership withhowstuffworks dot com, 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.959 and it is produced by Tyler klain A. Four more 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.760 podcasts from my Heartradio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.920 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.