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The Mere Presence of Your Smartphone Reduces Brain Power, Study Shows (utexas.edu)
An anonymous reader shares a study: Your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach -- even if it's off. That's the takeaway finding from a new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. McCombs Assistant Professor Adrian Ward and co-authors conducted experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users in an attempt to measure, for the first time, how well people can complete tasks when they have their smartphones nearby even when they're not using them. In one experiment, the researchers asked study participants to sit at a computer and take a series of tests that required full concentration in order to score well. The tests were geared to measure participants' available cognitive capacity -- that is, the brain's ability to hold and process data at any given time. Before beginning, participants were randomly instructed to place their smartphones either on the desk face down, in their pocket or personal bag, or in another room. All participants were instructed to turn their phones to silent. The researchers found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in a pocket or bag.
I can see how your smartphone represents a significant distraction. I'm working towards my Bachelors right now, and had to do a math course, never my strongest suit. I found having my smartphone nearby really did represent a kind of a distraction. The temptation when working on a hard problem was to check my texts or my emails, and so long as that damned smartphone was within easy reach I'd often give into temptation. In the end I'd either leave it in the bedroom, or go into the office in the evening without it and work out of the meeting room without even a computer nearby. Particularly for the last couple of courses I've basically sequestered myself away with printed copies of assignments and the textbooks for the purposes of studying for my final, using pen and paper to write out notes and definitions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Can't target you if you don't carry the tracking device.
/. = smart phone
Subby or the mod that approved it must've been using their smartphone.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm still getting Slashdot email notifications on my iPhone for responses to the virus-infected dick pics with my name, email address and website URL that some asshat posted over the weekend. I've always known that Slashdot had a fat porn fetish community..
Where my smartphone is secretly using my brain for memory storage?
Unless you're an outlier like HP that packs petabytes of RAM into a monster machine that nobody buys.
So they measured the performance degradation in smartphone addicts?
Ok.
How about a proper control group? You know, like a group of people who has a smartphone but is not addicted to it?
The tests were geared to measure participants' available cognitive capacity -- that is, the brain's ability to hold and process data at any given time. ... hurrying home now.
Because I realized my cell phone is not even in reach
PANICK!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why was this study even conducted in the first place? What was the hypothesis?
Did the authors try to explain the outcome?
The weren't using it. But it was within 20 meters and not secured in its Kryptonite case.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
While I've been arguing this very thing for years, I think this is such a hard thing to measure...I imagine smartphones in your pockets and such has about the same impact on general mental tasks as an opened window, or the school band practicing in the next room, or proximity to a personal attraction, etc...
Did the people running the study have phones in THEIR pockets?
Should have had the participants remember a few new phone numbers on the spot, or drive someplace new with just good directions; or write them for somebody else, or answer a few general knowledge questions from memory, or one of the many other basic things that smartphones do so well as to have become a crutch.
I would love to see more advanced studies on this topic.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
All the researchers had smart phones in their pockets when the planned the test, ran the tests, and analyzed the results. Since they are all dumb due to the presence of their cell phones, their conclusions must be all dumb.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
smartphone no make me dumb. me use smartphone now and me still smart. you no understand? we settle argument with guns! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Aside from not owning or wanting a smartphone myself for a whole list of reasons, I've been saying that they're just making people dumber. Now someone has proof. :-)
"Before beginning, participants were randomly instructed to place their smartphones either on the desk face down, in their pocket or personal bag, or in another room."
if you tell people to leave their smartphones in another room before a task, they will think something important is going on and will give it more attention. I bet if you ask people to take off their shoes, wash their hands carefully and put on bullet-proof vests they will be a fountain of brain power
People care more about their phone than participating in a study about phones
Is that the new "unit" whose cognitive ability needs to be assessed is "you + your smartphone" (i.e. the cyborg)
Research question should be "what is the cognitive ability, and accessible knowledge set, of "person+phone" vs of "person alone".
This is analogous to assessing the effectiveness of a US infantry soldier.
Do we assess them unequiped in their underwear, even if undistracted?
Or do we assess them when dressed in armor, night-vision helmet, weapons, gps, and radio/satphone capable of calling in massive precision air support.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
https://www.xkcd.com/903/
So to sum up, unsurprising results. Having a distraction generating machine close at hand is going to end up with more interruptions and less ability to concentrate on anything worth concentrating on, e.g. http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-...
"study" tells us that UT Austin wasted a lot of time and resources. Did the researchers have smartphones in their possession while conceiving the study? ;)
Forcing you to put your cell phone in a different room causes high levels of anxiety methinks. Is this just a byproduct of anxiety, increased fight-or-flight processing, focused attention due to an uncomfortable situation, etc?
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Easy one. Have them leave their wallet instead :)
I'll give you odds you get closer to the smartphone result than not :)
Maybe the psych dept. should be doing this instead of a bunch of athletes with "sports psychology" as a plan B.
... what (ping) was that again?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"McCombs School of Business"
"nearly 800"
I have college students. The grade of the activity does not impact that greatly unless it is a major exam. Even so, I bet a number of them would still be distracted. Since the birth of the smart phone I have observed the impact on the students as well as seeing the SAME material get harder ... when it is not harder. I may even make it easier and nothing changes or it continues to slide... it seems that time required is the major factor-- motivation to put in medium work and the TIME.
The effort put in outside of class is also down and the expectation of positive results has gone up at the same time. Before that, I noticed the younger students were google addicted and only would search for answers from bloggers rather than figure something out themselves - they already had this habit formed in high school and were not going to break away from it without a great deal of effort. I've had to google things myself and design work that did not fit with the results... but did fit with proper reference materials at the same time.
I've had 1 class for 15 years and mostly the same material --- since the topic doesn't change much and humans do not evolve (anymore) and while I've changed - I think I've improved but in either case, I've not changed a great deal over that span of time. I am no more removed from the students than I was before... well, the 1st 3 years I did transition a bit like many do and I was quite young when I started so I was closer to the students than the staff but I don't think that aspect has changed much after the 3rd year. Anyhow, I'm seeing a shift in students-- non-traditional they don't count because they are older demographics and even if they are of a different generation and act like a reminder of the past they are also more mature than their generation was a decade ago so not a valid reference point.
acts as a distraction != reduces brainpower
That headline is just misleading clickbait.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Damn, no mod points. +1
It is. Problem is there is a hardcore faction that does it really well, but has almost no "flashy" results. And then there is a "soft science" faction that gets almost all press time. In addition, many people mistake fuzzyness for lack of scientific rigor. That is not true, it just becomes harder to understand the results.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
J.M. only had 320 gb of storge.
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No wonder I have no brain as an addict! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Did they have a control group?
Did they have the people being tested in relation to themselves, switch how the tests were taken?
being, if you are one person whom was instructed to take the test with your phone outside the room,
did they then have them do the test again, with diffrent questions but simular dificulties, with thier phone near by.
I would need to know if they gave the two various tests to the same person under both conditions.
Did they eat before hand, did they have enough sleep, are thier accademic focus on the tests.
Phonezombistan
Smart phone, stupid people.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
it's your smartphone who owns you.
Khyber = expert on stupid threatening district attorneys & he got "stretched" in JAIL for it hahahaha https://openpasts.com/PublicRecord/ALEX-MCQUOWN/1578057922825639/ SEVERE "sphincteritis" hemorrhoids!
This doesn't really demonstrate that smartphones hinder cognitive function so much as demonstrate that the current accepted methodology for social science research is totally fucking flawed.
Obviously the premier authority in study of the physiology of the human brain.