(EBQ) Learning and Phones

Introduction:

Research indicates that smartphone addiction and frequent conscious thoughts about phones are prevalent among young adults, associated with poorer mental health such as anxiety, stress, and depression. This study aimed to replicate previous findings on memory accuracy in smartphone-absent versus smartphone-present conditions, predicted lower memory accuracy in participants with higher smartphone addiction scores and more frequent phone conscious thoughts, and explored the impact of affective changes during smartphone separation on memory performance. The study hypothesized that participants without their phones will experience negative affective changes, potentially impairing memory recall.

Participants:

A convenience sample of 119 undergraduate students (61 females, mean age = 20.67 years) was recruited from a private university in an Asian capital city, and were required to be smartphone owners without visual or auditory impairments. It was found, 43.7% reported using their smartphone mostly for social networking, followed by communication (31.1%) and entertainment (17.6%). On average, participants reported using their smartphones for 8.16 hours daily.

Method:

Participants were randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions: low-phone salience* (LS) and high-phone salience (HS). Participants in the HS condition were asked to place their smartphone on the left side of the table with the screen facing down. LS participants were asked to hand their smartphone to the researcher at the start of the study and the smartphones were kept on the researcher’s table throughout the task, and located out of sight behind a small panel on the table.

At the start of the experiment, participants were briefed on the rules in the experimental lab, such as no talking and no smartphone use (for HS only). Participants were also instructed to silence their smartphones. They filled in the consent form and demographic form before completing the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) questionnaire; this was to assess the current mood/affective state of the participants with state/feeling-descriptive statements. PANAS has ten positive affect statements (e.g. interested, enthusiastic, proud), and ten negative affect statements (e.g. guilty, nervous, hostile).

They then began the working memory span test via the O-Span Task, which measures the participants’ memory ability. Working memory ability was measured through the number of correct responses over total trials; scores ranged from 0 to 25, with the highest score representing superior working memory. Upon completion, participants were asked to complete the PANAS again.

Results and Discussion:

Participants who had their smartphone next to them (HS) had lower accuracy, with a mean score of 13.08 on the O-Span Task, whereas participants who were separated from their smartphones (LS) had higher accuracy with a mean score of 14.21.

Both low-phone salient(LS) and high-phone salient (HS) groups experienced a decrease in positive affect after the O-SPAN Task, suggesting that the reduced positive affect is likely to have stemmed from the prohibited usage (HS) and/or separation from their phone (LS). Results also showed lower memory recall in the LS group who experienced higher negative affect, providing some evidence that separation from their smartphone does contribute to feelings of anxiety.

In conclusion, the presence of the smartphone and frequent thoughts of their smartphone significantly affected memory recall accuracy, demonstrating that they contributed to an increase in cognitive load or ‘bandwidth effect’ interrupting participants’ memory processes.

*Salience: the quality of being particularly noticeable or important; prominence

Adapted from T, C. T., & Yong, M. H. (2020). Mobile phones: The effect of its presence on learning and memory. PloS one, 15(8), e0239233.

Introduction:

Prior surveys document high rates at which students carry phones to and use them during class. Hearing a cell phone ring in a class distracts learners from lesson content. However, if increased cognitive load explains learning deficits from texting distraction, the most invasive distraction should occur for students actively engaged in texting conversations during a class. This study looked at effects of non-class-related texting on classroom learning, hypothesized that texting would decline student academic performance.

Participants:

Researchers randomly selected 82 participant names from a complete college student list, and 40 of these students (21 men and 19 women) agreed to participate. Participants’ average age was 20.5 years. They had used cell phones an average of 5.4 years and used texting functions an average of 4.1 years.

Method:

Participants arrived (with their personal cell phone) and were told that they would watch an informational presentation. They had access to pencils and blank paper and were told they could take notes if they desired. They were also told they should try to retain the presented information for a quiz following a 5-minute break.

The researchers planned for participants to experience both conditions, so that they would be tested twice, once while texting and once while not texting. (Following the first quiz, the groups would switch conditions for the second presentation.)The Texting Group participants set their phones on vibrate, and were free to respond immediately to any texts that arrived. The Non-texting Group participants turned off the vibrate function, placed their phones away and did not use their phones during the presentation.

Participants then had the 5-minute break after being told they were not to discuss the content of the presentation. After the break, participants took a 10-item multiple-choice quiz on the presentation.

They then went back into the classroom for a different presentation, where participants experienced the other condition of the experiment, i.e. participants that had not been texted during the last presentation were now texted, and those who had been texted were not. The replicated break and the quiz procedures followed.

Results and Discussion:

When students texted, they had a significantly lower mean score of 6.02 multiple-choice questions correctly answered than when they did not text, with a higher mean score of 8.25 multiple-choice questions correctly answered. The difference in scores represented a 27% decline during texting from the non-texting performance.

Neither the story during which they texted, nor the order of texting and non-texting, produced different results.

The data confirm that texting does disrupt classroom learning. The real score declines (27%) were similar to results from the researchers’ previous study of students’ expected declines (33%). The corresponding declines for self-report and experimental measurements suggest that students are aware that using cell phones for personal communication in class compromises classroom learning.

Adapted from Froese, A. D., Carpenter, C. N., Inman, D. A., Schooley, J. R., Barnes, R. B., Brecht, P. W., & Chacon, J. D. (2012). Effects of classroom cell phone use on expected and actual learning. College Student Journal, 46(2), 323-332.