Pedestrian smartphone overuse and inattentional blindness: an observational study in Taipei, Taiwan

Ping-Ling Chen,Chih-Wei Pai

doi:10.1186/s12889-018-6163-5

Abstract

BackgroundSmartphone addiction has become a crucial social issue. Past studies have indicated that phone use such as talking or texting while walking constitutes a dual task that may cause pedestrians inattentional blindness and impair their awareness of surroundings.MethodsThis study investigated the influence of various smartphone tasks (calling, music listening, texting, playing games, and web surfing) on the smartphone overuse and inattentional blindness of pedestrians in Taipei, Taiwan. Pedestrian smartphone overuse was observed and recorded via WiFi cameras to determine whether pedestrians were using their smartphones when crossing a street with a signal. After crossing the street, pedestrians were interviewed to obtain additional information regarding demographics, smartphone tasks, data plan, and screen size. Pedestrians were classified into the case (distracted) and control (undistracted) groups. By determining whether pedestrians saw something unusual—a clown walking the opposite direction—and heard the national anthem played by the clown, inattentional blindness and deafness were examined. Pedestrians’ situational awareness was assessed by ascertaining whether they remembered how many seconds remained before the crossing signal upon arriving at the curb.ResultsIn total, 2556 pedestrians crossed the street and underwent the interview. Smartphone overuse and inattentional deafness were the commonest among music listeners. Playing Pokémon Go gaming was the task most associated with inattentional blindness. Logistic regression models revealed that contributing factors to smartphone overuse and inattentional blindness were a large smartphone screen (≥5 in), unlimited mobile Internet data, and being a student. The interactions of gaming with being a student and with unlimited data were significantly associated with smartphone overuse, inattentional blindness and deafness, and situational awareness.ConclusionsListening to music was the smartphone task most associated with pedestrian smartphone overuse and inattentional deafness. Pokémon Go was the most associated task with inattentional blindness and reduced situational awareness.

Highlights

Smartphone addiction has become a crucial social issue
We extend the understanding of traffic safety by concluding that listening to music and playing Pokémon Go are the smartphone activities that are most and second most associated with smartphone overuse, respectively
Our current research successfully identified playing Pokémon Go as the task most associated with inattentional blindness and reduced situational awareness

Summary

Introduction

Smartphone addiction has become a crucial social issue. Smartphone addiction, among adolescents, has become a crucial social issue [2,3,4]. Conducting an online questionnaire survey of students from a vocational high school in Taiwan, Liu et al [3] revealed that students using smartphones for predominantly gaming or for gaming and multiple other applications were the most susceptible to smartphone addiction. Employing a face-to-face interview survey of middle-school students in Korea, Cha and Seo [2] reported that using mobile messengers is the most influential determinant of smartphone addiction, followed by web surfing, gaming, and social networking. From a questionnaire survey of Swiss vocational schools, Severin et al [4] reported that social networking was the most relevant smartphone function associated with smartphone addiction. Kim et al reported that people with smartphone addiction were more likely to experience an accident, fall from height, or bump than those without addiction

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