The pervasive use of cell phones impacts many
people–both cell phone users and bystanders exposed
to conversations. A new study examined the effects
of overhearing a one-sided (cell phone) conversation
versus a two-sided conversation on attention and
memory.
In our realistic design, participants were led to
believe they were participating in a study examining
the relationship between anagrams and reading
comprehension.
While the participant was completing an anagram
task, the researcher left the room and participants
overheard a scripted conversation, either two
confederates talking with each other or one
confederate talking on a cell phone.
Upon the researcher’s return, the participant took a
recognition memory task with words from the
conversation, and completed a questionnaire
measuring the distracting nature of the conversation.
Participants who overheard the one-sided
conversation rated the conversation as significantly
higher in distractibility than those who overheard
the two-sided conversation.
Also, participants in the one-sided condition scored
higher on the recognition task. In particular they
were more confident and accurate in their responses
to words from the conversation than participants in
the two-sided condition.
However, participants’ scores on the anagram task
were not significantly different between conditions.
As in real world situations, individual participants
could pay varying amounts of attention to the
conversation since they were not explicitly
instructed to ignore it. Even though the
conversation was irrelevant to the anagram task and
contained less words and noise, one-sided
conversations still impacted participants’
self-reported distractibility and memory, thus
showing people are more attentive to cell phone
conversations than two-sided conversations.
Cell phone conversations may be a common source of
distraction causing negative consequences in
workplace environments and other public places.
For more information
Galván VV, Vessal RS, Golley MT (2013) The Effects
of Cell Phone Conversations on the Attention and
Memory of Bystanders. PLoS ONE 8(3): e58579. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058579
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0058579
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