Brown and Poulton

• Procedure

  • Participants drove their cats in an area with a relatively small number of constant inputs (like a residential area) or an area with a large amount of impacts (ie a crowded car park)
  • While doing this they listened to a pre-recorded tape containing a series of numbers that changed from one sequence to the next
• Results

  • Participants made more mistakes on the task in the car park than in the residential area
  • This could be explained by cognitive overload theory as they are giving more attention to the stimuli of driving than listening to numbers