Texting, Teens, and Driving
There is an interesting summary of a study that reveals that while the number of teens who are texting while driving is decreasing, they are still doing everything else while they are supposed to be driving. Reading this reminded me of three factoids about teens that I encountered over and over again while researching and writing The Middle School Mind: Growing Pains in Early Adolescent Brains.
1. They don’t believe what adults tell them about focusing only on driving when they are behind the wheel. They are convinced that they are good enough to do something else while driving.
2. They are convinced they are immortal and nothing bad is going to happen to them.
3. They are convinced that they can multi-task–which they can’t, of course. There is a mountain of neuroscience research demonstrating that our brains do not multi-task. It seems like they do because they are so fast. But they don’t. More on multi-tasking later.
Dr. Marshall administrator
Richard Marshall earned an Ed.D. in reading and learning disabilities at West Virginia University in 1982. While completing his doctoral studies he served as an educational specialist in the Pediatric Neurology. Upon completion of his degree he became an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the WVU Medical School. After moving to Florida in 1983, he joined the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at the University of South Florida and worked for five years in the Neonatal Developmental Follow-Up Program. In 1993, he completed a Ph.D. in School Psychology at the University of Georgia with an emphasis in Child and Adolescent Neuropsychology. Upon degree completion, he taught courses in the biological bases of behavior and neuropsychology at the University of Texas in Austin. He also served as developmental psychologist at the Children’s Hospital of Austin. He and his family returned to Florida in 2001 and he once more became a faculty member at the University of South Florida. He is presently an Associate Professor in the College of Education and he is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the USF College of Medicine. In 2008, Dr. Marshall co-authored the Pediatric Behavior Rating Scale; in 2011, he co-authored The Middle School Mind: Growing Pains in Early Adolescent Brains (2011) and is currently revising the Handbook for Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child (2012). In addition to writing and a busy schedule of workshops and presentations, Dr. Marshall also maintains a private practice in Lakeland, Florida where he specializes in the assessment and treatment of children and adults with emotional, behavioral, and learning disorders; parenting; family therapy; and couples counseling. As part of that practice he maintains a daily blog and he co-hosts The Mental Breakdown Podcast (iTunes, Google Play Music, and YouTube) and the Psychreg Podcast. He has spoken to professional and community groups throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America.
About the author