The deleterious effect of “mere presence” of one’s smartphone on cognitive performance.
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1
Department of Psychological science, School of Health and Human Science, Southern Cross University, Australia
Aim: The main purpose of the study was to investigate whether smartphone salience, the mere presence or absence of participants’ smartphones, may affect their performance in two cognitive test tasks, a Digit additive cancellation task and an OSpan task. Furthermore, associations between cognitive performance, gender, age, average use and self-reported smartphone relationships were also investigated. Method: In this between subjects’ design, 50 participants (26 females & 24 males, Mage =29.3, SDage =9.9) were randomly allocated to either a “presence” or “absence” smartphone condition while completing two cognitive test tasks (Digit additive cancellation task & OSpan). In the presence condition, smartphones were placed on the table in front of the participant whereas in the absence condition, smartphones were removed from the participants. In addition, participants completed smartphone use and relationship questionnaires. Results: In order to examine the effects of smartphone salience and gender on cognitive performance, a two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) of smartphone salience (presence, absence) by gender (females, males) was conducted for the two cognitive tasks (Digit additive task and OSpan task). Results revealed that participant’s performance on both cognitive tasks was significantly affected by the smartphone presence than absence condition. Interestingly, for female participants, presence of their smartphone had a greater deleterious effect on their performance on the OSpan task in comparison to male participants. There was no significant difference in responses to the Smartphone use and relationship questionnaires in the two experimental groups. Conclusion: The findings provide evidence that the mere presence of a smartphone may have deleterious effects on cognitive performance. In particular, females were more affected by the presence of their phone when completing the OSpan task, which is an assessment of working memory.
Keywords:
Smartphone salience,
Smartphone dependence,
Cognition,
Attention,
working memory
Conference:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference , Coffs Harbour, Australia, 4 Oct - 5 Oct, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Research
Topic:
Abstract for 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference
Citation:
Belic
I and
Winskel
H
(2019). The deleterious effect of “mere presence” of one’s smartphone on cognitive performance..
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.74.00014
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Received:
19 Sep 2018;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Ivanka Belic, Department of Psychological science, School of Health and Human Science, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia, i.belic.10@student.scu.edu.au
Dr. Heather Winskel, Department of Psychological science, School of Health and Human Science, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia, heather.winskel@scu.edu.au