Texting while driving

Normally when I am doing experiments, they only occupy about three-fourths of my brain. The remaining brain is answering email, thinking about other experiments, thinking about dinner, humming a little tune, whatever.

So you would think that I could perfectly well carry on a conversation and answer a few questions about what I'm doing while I do experiments. But no. With people watching, I forget which way caps twist to tighten. I forget to press important buttons. I drop things, like my experimental prep.

Today two people were watching me prep and (try to) carry out experiments, and it was borderline disastrous. (Some of this had to do with bad luck for the day, but then again why is it always on the days that my prep is a total failure that people are watching? They never seem to come by when I am my usual genius whiz self.)

And it got me to thinking, why is it so damn hard to do experiments when people watch? I have four explanations:

1) Observers make you self-conscious, leading to obvious problems with routine tasks of coordination that proceed most effectively without conscious control.

2) The cortical load imposed by answering even very easy questions about your experiments is far higher than one realizes.

3) A more hypothetical possibility: that there is a non-trivial burden placed on your brain simply by being in a social situation--i.e. with observers--so that even if those observers are silent, a surprising portion of your brain is being used to monitor them.

4) Though I routinely can spare a quarter of my brain for email etc., there are brief periods (as short as 5-10 s) during which I use all of it to focus on the experiment at hand, and any social burden is problematic.

Of course these are not mutually exclusive, though I would love to know whether anyone has ever studied the possible existence of effect #3.

The whole situation reminds me of the recent brouhaha over texting while driving (ed: who the hell was surprised that texting is bad for driving?!) and the attendant reminders that the "hands-free" policy espoused by many states is essentially useless, because it turns out that the mental load of carrying your end of the conversation, rather than the physical act of holding the phone, is the problem.

I wish the Senate would pass a law preventing me from having to train up other people on my experiments when I am very pressured for time by the impending bomb in my belly, and also all the rest of the time too because let's face it, that shit's annoying. If I get a petition going, you people will be the first to know.