Articles
Ringing cell phone more distracting than you thought?
Psychology » A study says 'nuisance noises' seem to jar attention and learning processes.
By Shari Roan
Los Angeles Times
Updated: 06/07/2009 01:25:43 AM MDT
Everyone hates that cell phone that rings in an inappropriate setting -- a classroom, during a concert or movie, in a church (how about during a wedding?). These calls are not only annoying, a new study has found, but they pose the kind of distraction that can impair learning or derail someone's train of thought.
"Nuisance noises have real-life impacts," said Jill Shelton, of Washington University in St. Louis, the author of the study, in a news release.
In one study, Shelton posed as a student in a crowded, undergraduate psychology lecture and allowed her cell phone to ring loudly for about 30 seconds. The students exposed to the ringing scored 25 percent worse on a test of material presented before the distraction. Students tested later scored about 25 percent worse for recall of content during the distraction even though the same information was covered by the professor just before the phone ring and was projected as text in a slide show during the distraction.
Students scored even worse when Shelton added to the disturbance by frantically searching her handbag as if trying to find and silence her phone.
The study, published online in the Journal of Environmental Psychology , also found that cell phones that play a popular song for a ring tone can have an even longer-lasting negative effect on attention. A custom tone that identifies the caller as a particular person can be especially distracting.
"Depending on how familiar people are with these songs, it could lead to an even worse impairment in their cognitive performance," she said.
The findings raise the question of what other types of everyday disturbances -- such as beeping and buzzing from incoming e-mail -- jar attention and learning processes. But the study showed that, with repeated exposure, students could block the distracting effects and reduce cognitive impairment caused by the noise.
"There's definitely some evidence to suggest that people can become habituated to a distracting noise," she said. "If you're in an office where the phones are just ringing all the time every day, it may initially be distracting to you, but you will probably get over it."
