Cognitive control and visual search behaviors among mobile phone users in a locomotion task : a pilot study

Abstract

With the increase in mobile phone ownership worldwide, the prevalent use of mobile phones has become an indispensable daily activity (Griffiths D. M., 1999; Griffiths D. , 2004; Haga, et al., 2015). Despite the ubiquitous nature of texting and walking concurrently, there are limited studies that focus on habitual natures (Oulasvirta, Rattenbury, Ma, & Raita, 2012) that suggests low cognitive levels arising from an act done without consciousness (LaRose, Lin, & Eastin, 2003) in perception-action coupling. As it has been found that experts experience lower levels of cognitive processing especially on the coherence of T7-Fz on electroencephalogram (EEG) (Zhu, Poolton, Wilson, Maxwell, & Masters, 2011), it was hypothesized that highly experienced individuals who text and walk at the same time will exhibit low level of cognitive processing with higher fixation count on the phone than the environment. EEG and wireless eye-tracking device were used to record the brainwaves and the gaze of the participant respectively in this study. The result found relatively higher T7-Fz coherence value for both locomotion only and texting with locomotion task compared to stationary texting. Fixation count on the phone was greater than environment, and the fixation count on the environment had a significant drop during the texting and locomotion task. In conclusion, this pilot study gave an insight of a relatively high level of cognitive processing being present in the visual perception and motor planning, while a decrease in fixation count on the environment is exhibited in perception-action coupling. Keywords: Electroencephalogram; visual search behavior; action-perception; motor control