Technology on-the-go: understanding the risks of mobile phone use during walking

Abstract

Technology increasingly forces individuals to attend to multiple concurrent stimuli including virtual stimuli such as from the smartphone. The current work compared dual-task costs (DTCs) of concurrent reading/writing during walking among N=30 healthy individuals. Task performance was correlated with visual scanning and executive function. Results demonstrated that writing while walking is associated with increased gait variability and larger gait DTCs compared with reading. Similar costs to reading/writing speed were identified, but text comprehension was more impaired by writing than by reading and was related with attention and executive function. These results emphasize that greater interference in dual-task mobile phone use occurs when concurrent tasks share resources. This should be taken into consideration when developing mobile applications.