60秒科学:你能驾驶时一心多用吗？

The National Safety Council estimates that 28 percent of all highway accidents and deaths are caused by drivers paying poor attention to the road because they’re holding cell phones to their heads. But a study of 200 volunteers finds that one out of every 40 people apparently¹ can operate a vehicle just fine while chatting on a phone. In simulated driving tests, anyway. The research by University of Utah psychologists Jason Watson and David Strayer will be published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

Why are there so few great multi-taskers? The researchers say there may be a hidden cost, and that someone might excel at multi-tasking at the expense of other information processing. Or the high-tech² environment that rewards multi-tasking is too new for the ability to have widely propagated, if there’s a true evolutionary³ advantage to having it.

The researchers want to study so-called supertaskers to find out how their brains do it. Meanwhile, don’t assume you’re one of the very few who can apparently talk and drive safely. There’s a very high probability that you’re not.
 

1 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

2 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

3 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。