The deleterious effect of “mere presence” of one’s smartphone on cognitive performance.

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The deleterious effect of “mere presence” of one’s smartphone on cognitive performance. Ivanka Belic1* and Heather Winskel1* 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 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. 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 Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ivanka Belic Heather Winskel Google Ivanka Belic Heather Winskel Google Scholar Ivanka Belic Heather Winskel PubMed Ivanka Belic Heather Winskel Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.