Three experiments have examined the impact of cell phone use
on pedestrian behavior in virtual environments. The first experiment
(Stavrinos et al., 2011) compared participants’ performance
under no distraction with performance holding a naturalistic cell
phone conversation. Participants performed more poorly when
holding a cell phone conversation regardless of conversation type
with one exception: Attention to traffic seemed to be inhibited
more by cognitively complex conversations than naturalistic conversations.
In the second experiment, participants completed a
virtual street-crossing task while texting, listening to music, and
holding a vocal cell phone conversation (Schwebel et al., 2012).
Pedestrians texting or listening to music while crossing a virtual
street were significantly more likely to be hit by vehicles
than participants either undistracted or holding a vocal cell phone
conversation. Most recently, Tapiro et al. (2016) investigated the
impact of cell phone conversations on participants’ visual attention
and ability to make safe crossing decisions. Participant age groups
included adults as well as children aged 7–8, 9–10, and 11–13 years.
For all age groups, cognitively demanding conversations resulted
in slower reaction times, smaller crossing gaps, and less attention
to the visual periphery compared to conditions of naturalistic
conversation and no distraction. However, to our knowledge no
studies have examined the impact of a secondary task (particularly
a cell phone conversation) on pedestrian auditory perception when
visual information is not available.