Halfalogue Vs Monologue

Emberson et al (2010) designed an experiment to determine why overheard phone calls pose more of a distraction than a conversation between physically present individuals and concluded that the unpredictability of the overheard speech contributes to the listener’s distractedness. They hypothesized that the depletion of the listener’s attention would negatively impact their performance on a task. In experiment 1, they tested the participants’ performances on two kinds of tasks (visual monitoring and choice reaction time) and compared their performances in four separate conditions: no background noise, or overhearing a either a dialogue, a halfalogue, or a monologue. Compared to the silent condition, they found that performance in both tasks decreased significantly when the participant listened to the halfalogue, while there was no significant difference with the dialogue or with the monologue. In experiment 2, the researchers replicated the setup of the first experiment, except that they converted the original conversation audio
To build on this assumption, an interesting follow-up study could test whether overhearing halfalogues would distract participants in a simulated driving scenario. To do this, the researchers could essentially replicate the setup of experiment 1; however, instead of the two tasks from the original experiment, the participants would engage with a virtual reality technology that would mimic the act of driving a car on the road. The researchers could measure participants’ unsafe driving behaviors (such as speeding, failing to signal for turns, etc.) while they listen to a halfalogue. They could compare the results to a control group of participants who participate in the simulation with no background noise in order to determine whether overhearing phone calls actually endanger