{"id":1925,"date":"2015-11-24T17:17:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T22:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1925"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:31:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:31:34","slug":"a-tip-on-how-to-improve-your-focus-turn-your-cell-phone-on-silent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2015\/11\/24\/a-tip-on-how-to-improve-your-focus-turn-your-cell-phone-on-silent\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tip on How to Improve Your Focus: Turn Your Cell Phone on Silent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Notification\"<\/a>Have you ever worked on a homework assignment with your cell phone near you so that you can hear\u00a0when you get a notification? \u00a0I know I have. \u00a0Cell phone use has become widespread in today’s society. \u00a0Everywhere you go, you see people with cell phones in their hands, and they commonly try to use\u00a0their cell phones as they\u00a0do something else. \u00a0You might see someone looking down at a cell phone while driving, texting while chatting with a friend, and scrolling through a social media app while doing homework. Research has shown that the use of cell phones during\u00a0a concurrent task can be very distracting and can impair\u00a0performance on that task, but what about\u00a0when you\u00a0receive a notification and do not check or respond\u00a0to it?<\/p>\n

Many people carry their phones with them almost everywhere they go. \u00a0For example, you\u00a0might bring your cell phone to class and\u00a0store it in your pocket, or\u00a0leave your cell phone lying\u00a0on your desk while you work on a homework assignment. \u00a0So what happens when you hear a ring\u00a0or feel vibrations from your cell phone, alerting you that you’ve received a\u00a0notification?\u00a0 Does it affect your attention? \u00a0Does simply getting a notification on your cell phone, without checking it, have a cost to your attention? \u00a0Researchers Stothart, Mitchum, and Yehnert (2015) conducted a study to examine\u00a0this question.<\/p>\n

So here’s the thing about attention: it’s limited. \u00a0You can’t just pay attention to everything in sight. There’s a limit for\u00a0the amount of tasks that you can attend to simultaneously. \u00a0This means that you can’t effectively read your textbook, watch your favorite show on television, go on Facebook, and check your phone all at the same time. \u00a0But you do have some attentional control, which means that you can select what you want to pay attention to and then direct your attention to that. \u00a0So, if you want to read\u00a0your textbook while the television is on, you can direct your attention to your textbook so that you can pay attention to it\u00a0and\u00a0not the television (however, I recommend turning the television off in order to minimize distractions).<\/p>\n

Every task that you do requires some of your attention, so\u00a0if you’re paying attention to one thing, then your ability to pay attention to another thing\u00a0is reduced. \u00a0Have you ever tried doing\u00a0two things at once, such as talking on the phone with your mom while walking, and noticed that it’s harder to do them both at the same time? \u00a0This is because dividing your attention between multiple tasks, or multi-tasking, reduces your ability to do both tasks, making them more difficult.\u00a0 Many studies have looked at divided attention and its consequences in terms of distracted driving. \u00a0One study showed that people who talked on their cell phones while driving had impaired driving abilities such as\u00a0slower breaking times and more rear-ending accidents (to read more about this in another blog post, click here<\/a>). \u00a0This is just one example of the attentional costs of divided attention, which has been a popular topic in research. \u00a0Other factors such as sleep deprivation can have attentional costs as well, but we won’t talk about that here (so if you’re interested in learning more about sleep deprivation, click here<\/a>\u00a0to read a post on it).<\/p>\n

The study conducted by Stothart et al. (2015) looked into\u00a0whether or not there is an attentional cost in simply receiving a notification for a call or text message, without actually checking or responding to it. Participants were put into one of three groups: a group that received calls to their cell phones, a\u00a0group that received text messages to their cell phones, and a control group that did not receive any notifications to their cell phones. \u00a0Participants in the\u00a0notification groups received calls or text messages to their own cell\u00a0phones, but did not check or respond to those notifications. The researchers thought that this would better\u00a0resemble real-life situations in which the notifications are personally relevant to the phone user. \u00a0They thought that it would\u00a0provide more accurate results than if they\u00a0had given the participants lab cell phones in which the notifications might be less personally relevant to the them.<\/p>\n

Participants completed\u00a0the Sustained Attention to Response Task (known as the SART), which measures sustained attention and mind wandering. \u00a0Sustained attention is the ability to focus on one particular task\u00a0without being distracted. \u00a0For example, if you can focus on reading your textbook without being distracted, then you are showing sustained attention. \u00a0Mind wandering is having thoughts that are irrelevant to the task that you are doing. \u00a0Many students likely experience mind wandering during class, which could be\u00a0when you are listening to your professor talk about biology and you instead start thinking about lunch (see figure below for more examples). \u00a0Mind wandering during a task has been shown to impair performance on that task. \u00a0So, if you are taking notes in class and your mind starts to wander, you might miss some information that your professor tells you, which would likely lower the quality of your notes.<\/p>\n

\"Examples<\/a>

Examples of Mind Wandering in Class<\/p><\/div>\n

During the first half of the SART, participants completed the task\u00a0normally, but during the second half, participants in the call group received four calls to their cell phones, participants in the text group received four texts to their cell phones, and participants in the control group did not receive any notifications.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that participants in the call and text groups made more mistakes\u00a0on the SART compared to participants in the control group. \u00a0Errors on the SART are consistent with mind wandering, which suggests that\u00a0the cell phone call and text notifications distracted the participants and caused them to mind wander during the\u00a0SART. \u00a0The researchers believed that it was the mind wandering that caused the differences between the groups because mind wandering persists even after the quick cell phone notifications. \u00a0There was also some evidence that call notifications were more distracting\u00a0than text notifications. \u00a0The results of this study suggest that cell phone notifications can impair attention even if you don’t actually check or respond to the notifications. This means that if\u00a0you’re listening to your professor lecture\u00a0in class, and you feel your cell phone vibrate in your pocket, your ability to pay attention to your professor’s lecture is impaired.<\/p>\n

The increase in errors between the notification groups and the control group in this study is similar to the decrease in performance between distracted drivers and non-distracted drivers in distracted driving studies (for another post on the consequences of cell phone use while driving, click here<\/a>). This means that the level of impairment on attention may be similar between cell phone notifications and distracted driving, but more research would need to be done that compares the two\u00a0in order to make that claim. \u00a0But still, it might be a good idea to turn your cell phone on silent while you’re driving so that it doesn’t distract you!<\/p>\n

So, next time you are doing a task that you really want to be able to focus on, remember that simply hearing your phone ring can distract you and possibly cause your mind to wander. \u00a0If you have to do a task that requires a lot of attention, such as a hard homework assignment, or you don’t have a lot of time to complete the task, then my advice to you is to put your cell phone on silent where you can’t see it (or on do not disturb) and get to work!\u00a0 This will minimize distractions from your cell phone and allow you to focus on the task at hand. \u00a0Instead of dividing your attention between your cell phone and the task, you’ll be able to allocate more of\u00a0your attention\u00a0to the task. If you’re like me (and most people I know) and\u00a0always have your cell phone on you, then remember this tip\u00a0next time you want to complete a task as efficiently as possible!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To view\u00a0the original article, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/p>\n

Stothart, C., Mitchum, A., & Yehnert, C. (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41<\/em>, 893-897. doi:\u00a010.1037\/xhp0000100<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever worked on a homework assignment with your cell phone near you so that you can hear\u00a0when you get a notification? \u00a0I know I have. \u00a0Cell phone use has become widespread in today’s society. \u00a0Everywhere you go, you see people with cell phones in their hands, and they commonly try to use\u00a0their cell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5451,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216],"tags":[150454,80225],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1925"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3785,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925\/revisions\/3785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}