Faculty Mentor
Dr. Jillene Seiver
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
2020
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Research demonstrates that the frequent usage of cellphones is disruptive and leads to reduced efficiency while multitasking and also suggested that the sheer existence of a mobile phone might be as equally disruptive and have adverse social contact implications. Previous research (Thornton, Faires, Robbins, and Rollins 2014, Exp 2) reported that students in a classroom setting performed poorer on a series of cognitive tasks when their cell phones were on their desk than when they were not. This study’s hypothesis: In this direct replication study, it was predicted that students whose cell phones were on their desk would perform poorer on the Trail Making B test and the Additive Cancellation Task. The results of this study did not replicate the finding from Thornton, et al (2014). The main difference is that these participants did not perform poorer with their cell phones present. These findings suggest that cell phones are not as distracting as the original study suggested. It is possible that cell phones were distracting at the time of the original study, but students have adapted to them.
Recommended Citation
Sanchez, Samantha, "The Mere Presence of a Cell Phone May be Distracting" (2020). 2020 Symposium Posters. 7.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2020_posters/7
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
