Inventing Iron Man (12 page)

In this chapter, we will explore this specific problem. We will also look into what has been done to minimize the effects of cognitive load in real-life jobs that share some of the same concerns as Iron Man—fighter jet pilots. This chapter is about the limits of human information processing, or what we would more commonly think of as attention. And this is something that Tony Stark recognizes as an issue. In the story “World's Most Wanted, Part 6: Some King of the World” (Iron Man #13, 2009), Tony says, “The Iron Man is getting more complicated than I can pilot. I need to downgrade it back into
something more … consumer grade.” Later in that same story, he echoes this sentiment by saying “I have to simplify the suit.” Let's look at why he has to simplify that suit!

Linking up a human body with technology has its limitations. A reasonable place to start is with one of the most commonly seen pieces of technology—the cell phone. Love 'em or hate 'em, almost all of us have used a cell phone and we have certainly seen many, many cell phone users. Just based on cellular subscriptions, almost 90% of the U.S. population uses cell phones. What I want to focus on here isn't just to do with using a cell phone, but rather using a cell phone while doing something else. Particularly, how much attention does it take up to use a cell phone and should you use one while driving a car? Or, even better, a mechanical suit of high-tech armor? Just this morning while driving to work I was stuck behind an SUV at a light with an advanced green signal flashing. Where I live, drivers who are paying attention realize that the advanced green signal means we get to turn left. However, the driver ahead of me failed to notice the signal. When I looked closely, I realized that the driver was instead talking on a cell phone and not really paying attention to what was happening. Why does that happen? To answer that means asking how much attention do you have to play with and are all tasks created equal?

Is it really a problem to use a cell phone while driving, or was I just a little put off because the driver kept me from turning left? Only if the answer to the first question is yes is it relevant to figure out why. It has been estimated by Marla De Jong that 85% of cell phone users in the United States use their phones while driving. Other studies have shown that cell phone use can increase the risk of a crash during driving fourfold. So, clearly, it is more than just a guess that using a cell phone while driving impairs driving performance. Why? Part of this has to do with the attention demands of speech and the idea of “inattention blindness.”

Speaking and talking are motor acts that involve listening and attention. It turns out that listening takes up less of the activity in our brains than does speaking and getting ready to speak. The interesting part of all of this is that when we are on a phone listening to
someone, preparing to speak to them, and then actually speaking we are constantly trying to figure out where the person is. A kind of mental image of where the person is and who they are forms. Maintaining this takes up a lot of the processing power in our brains. It is almost like the ancient part of our brain is constantly searching for who we are talking to. But it cannot “see” them. “What is that voice in the air?” we might ask in “Cirroc” (aka Phil Hartman's) voice right out of
Saturday Night Live
's “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” fame. This is likely why just listening to music or talking to someone in the same vehicle does not cause the same distraction as talking on a cell phone. By the way, this applies to hands-free phones as well as normal cell phones. The difference is that with the hands-free phone the motor act of holding the phone is gone. This makes it marginally better but still doesn't address the issue of attention.

It should go without saying (but I will say it anyway) that this problem is even more dramatic when the cognitive task is combined with a motor act, like texting and driving. This actually does happen and that can have horrific outcomes. Tragically, on July 24, 2009, a driver ran her car into the back of a public works truck in Edmonton, Alberta. A city worker who was collecting pylons from the road behind the truck was crushed to death. Witnesses reported that the driver of the car did not apply the brakes at any time and even exited her vehicle after the accident while continuing to text. The driver pled guilty to a charge of careless driving. Many jurisdictions have now moved to ban handheld cell phone use (and texting by default) while driving. Distraction during multitasking with technology even as “simple” as an automobile and a phone don't mix. Let alone considering the implications for piloting Iron Man.

The ability to multitask also changes with age. Most people realize that older adults have an increased chance of falling when standing or walking. Many changes in the body make this come about, but some of it has to do with a reduced ability to control the body moving in the environment. That is, to manage all the information available. So, if someone has to walk and pay attention to the terrain—like walking down a staircase—carefully and think of something else they are managing many different pieces of information at once. This is often explored in scientific research using what is called a “dual task” paradigm.

I mentioned above the expression of “walking and chewing gum at the same time.” Maybe a better one is to try rubbing your stomach.
Then try tapping your head with the other hand. Now try doing them at the same time. You likely noticed that you actually didn't have to pay much attention to either rubbing or tapping but when you did them at the same time you really had to think about it. Especially at the start. If you really want to make it harder, try to tap your left or right foot as well. Your ability to manage many tasks is limited and goes down as you age. So, in the dual task paradigm, older adults who have to do more than one thing wind up doing both things poorly. How does that relate to Iron Man? Running around as Iron Man involves a lot more than a “dual task”! I suggest it would be more like “centi-tasking”—doing a hundred things at once.

But, as with so many other things, a lot of a person's ability to multitask has to do directly with his or her level of training. That is, you cannot just jump into the Iron Man suit of armor (or any technology) and use it without training. It turns out that even the ability to avoid or reduce attention conflict in using a cell phone can be trained. James Hunton from Bentley College and Jacob Rose from Lincoln University did a neat study to look at this. They used a “simulated” driving course and had people have no conversation, a real conversation with a passenger, and a real conversation over a hands-free cell phone. They were keen to go beyond the small attentional issue of actually holding a phone because the biggest problem for attention is the conversation with someone who isn't physically in the line of sight. As you might guess from the other things we talked about, they found that even the hands-free cellular phone call increased the number of driving incidents and the number of crashes drivers had. By the way, a conversation with a real passenger led to increased problems also, but nowhere near the cell phone level. The extra twist was that they compared people who had pilot training with those who didn't have training as pilots. The pilots did better, much better actually, than ordinary folks. It isn't clear yet if those pilots got better at multitasking by the practice that occurred in training to be a pilot, or if they were better multitaskers to start. Pilots also expressed less desire to “visualize” or “see” the people they were talking to than did the nonpilots.

So far this kind of research suggests a surprising result. A major issue is the need to use some of the brain's limited attention to try to imagine the person being spoken to. This, combined with the fact that, unlike a passenger in the vehicle who can see what is going on, people on cell phones cannot modify their patterns of speech and
conversation. Together, these impediments to attention are a dangerous mix and threaten necessary attention for driving safely. I have replotted some of Hunton and Rose's data and put an example together in
figure 4.1
. For contrast, I have used Jim Rhodes as an example of a pilot and Ivan Vanko (aka “Whiplash”) in
Iron Man 2
as a nonpilot. Bottom line? Rhodey can talk to Jarvis or Pepper Potts while flying and won't have much risk of increased crash. Whiplash should try the strong silent routine at all times, even if he co-opts a suit to fly around in. Which, as we saw in Mickey Rourke's film portrayal of him, he mostly did.

Figure 4.1. Comparison of the effects of multitasking and driving crashes when having no conversation, talking to a person in a vehicle, or talking on a cell phone for pilots (e.g., Jim Rhodes) and nonpilots (e.g., Ivan Vanko). Data redrawn from Hunton and Rose (2005).

Another study done at the University of Utah by James Watson and David Strayer also looked into “dual task” interference. They had people in a driving simulator (main task) and then use a cell phone
(secondary task). To make sure anything they found was really about the interaction between tasks, they also had the participants use a hands-free cell phone. The main thing of interest was whether using the cell phone interfered with the reaction time to braking when a “driver” in the car ahead applied the brakes. As you might expect, a whopping 97% of the people studied showed a significant effect of using a cell phone and responded slower to applying the brakes when the person ahead of them did so abruptly. What was truly striking about this project, though, was that just under 3% of participants showed no performance interference at all. The authors called these people “supertaskers” and found that they represent a very small proportion of people who were able to excel at multitasking. (I find it very pleasing to use a word like “supertasker” when writing a book about a superhero.) It remains to be seen if this kind of “supertasking” ability can be gained or improved by experience or training. Clearly, to have any hope at all at using the Iron Man suit of armor, Tony Stark (and also Jim Rhodes as War Machine) would have to belong to this very small group of people.

The whole idea of attention is interesting all by itself. Lots of recent research has looked at brain activation during tasks that had a timing component as well as a location in space. Different brain areas get activated depending on what we are doing and what the expectation or timing is. Partly this relates to what would be called the perception of time. You might think of this as the “watched pot never boils” idea. How much attention we put on something can alter our perception of time. This, then, would be another wildcard for Tony Stark to deal with while he tries to maneuver the Iron Man armor.

Another question to think about is the extent to which multitasking in stressful environments can actually be learned or trained as opposed to being an inherent part of a person. Let's take the most complex “worst case” scenario for Iron Man. Despite the fact that we already recognize that flying around as Iron Man is not currently possible, let's still use that as an example of the control problem. Comic books and the movies from Marvel Studios often depict Iron Man as a kind of flying-suit-wearing jet-fighter. So, let's use the complexity, information management, and multitasking involved in
military aviation as our real-life example of multitasking pilots and their ability to concentrate.

Recall the concept of embodiment we talked about earlier in the book on the topics of prosthetic limbs and of the Iron Man suit. Perhaps pilots learn to “embody” the aircraft to such an extent that they can dissociate the strangeness of multitasking and conversing remotely. The idea of pilots and jet fighters is a good reference point for Iron Man in action and his allocation of attention. The key here is imagining having to pilot the Iron Man suit of armor and having to deal not just with the tremendous attention even that would take up but also to be involved in what are essentially military operations at the same time. The kind of high-stress situation that we are talking about is when immediate and extreme negative outcomes can occur from the smallest error, a “kill or be killed” work environment for Iron Man. At the best of times, putting all of this together means that even ordinary and habitually practiced movements and skills can be difficult to perform properly and horrific mistakes can occur.

Related to the issue of cognitive load and distraction—and cell phone use—are some worrying statistics for flying. The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority reported in 2010 that of all the serious flying “events” (some of which involved crashes and fatalities) over half included violations of pilots and copilots having excessive conversations or using cell phones—being distracted. These are examples from the relatively peaceful concept of flying a civil aircraft. When we come back to Iron Man, it should be pretty obvious that the “task” of piloting a robotic suit combined with performing military operations would be huge. And largely impossible, if the suit of armor were something to be used like a tool and separate from the body of the user.