Speaking a second language has been shown to negatively impact performance on a secondary task. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that speaking English as a second language over a hands free cellular telephone while driving would be more detrimental to driving performance than speaking English as a first language or as a second language for fluent bilinguals. 107 York University students participated in the study. The driving task was performed using the driving simulation program Drivesim 4.00. The experiment consisted of control driving and speaking conditions, as well as dual conditions with both driving and speaking tasks. ESL speakers failed to demonstrate any significant additional decrements associated with speaking on a hands-free cellular telephone and driving compared to monolinguals. Bilinguals however, demonstrated significantly fewer decrements compared to monolinguals, providing a practical demonstration of the cognitive advantages of bilinguals in dual task paradigms. (Author/publisher)
Abstract