Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does The Mere Presence Of A Cell Phone Impair Task Performance?, Sabrina Urick, Kaylee Egbers, Veronica Sinell

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

The purpose of our study was to determine if the mere presence of a person’s cell phone serves as a distraction that impairs task performance, even if the person does not use it. In order to test this, we had two groups of participants complete several tasks that require attention and accurate memory in order to perform well. The tasks used were a card matching game (sometimes known as Concentration), a sequential memory game (Simon), and the n-back task. One group was instructed to put their cell phones away before they were presented with the tasks and the other group …