The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance

The smartphone represents a device that is becoming more and more widespread around the world. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021 100% of Americans aged 18–29 owned a cellphone of some type, while 96% owned a smartphone. The fact that smartphone usage is increasing is a result of the many advantages it offers. From unlimited communication options to unlimited access to knowledge, the smartphone enables endless possibilities. However, the societal shift towards a greater use of the smartphone raises potential for negative consequences.

People are permanently surrounded by distractions, such as the smartphone. To suppress an impulse like “I want to play on my smartphone now!”, a higher instance must control this impulse to be able to perform. The ability to organize, plan, analyze, and compare past and present actions and to control impulses are described as executive functions. The executive function, as part of a working memory model, was firstly mentioned by Baddeley (1974). In the context of this model, Baddeley proposes that cognitive resources are limited.

In accordance with Baddeley, other scientists assume as well that the working memory is limited in its processing capacity. This has been proven several times. The extent to which the cognitive processes are influenced by this is described in John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (1988). In the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), the load which arises, for example from new information, is described.

According to the CLT, different tasks may have different requirements as well as different levels of complexity. The intrinsic load of a task can thus be different. If the available working memory resources needed to process the intrinsic and extraneous load are exceeded, the cognitive system cannot process all the necessary information to some extent, which results in poorer cognitive abilities. The extraneous load in a given situation can differ as well. The smartphone could therefore represent a load, namely in the form of an extraneous load.

Distraction by the smartphone

Smartphones receive notifications, which can trigger noises (sounds) and vibrations. These notifications and potential sounds can be a distraction for humans. Studies show the significant distraction of smartphone notifications, even when participants do not respond to the messages. Another study shows that an involuntary attention system becomes active, which actively listens to the smartphone. It was found that hearing one’s own name activates the same system as the ringing of one's own cell phone or smartphone. Distracting effects of the cell phone could also be shown for college students in the context of a lecture. It was shown that participants who kept their cell phones with them during a lecture performed worse and had a worse recall of the contents of the lecture than participants who did not have their cell phones with them.

According to a review that particularly focused on the smartphones influence on areas of attention, inhibition, and working memory, strong effects of the smartphone can be seen on precisely these areas. Many studies indicate that the smartphone has negative effects on sleep, stress, and academic performance. Liebherr et al. point to the fact that the smartphone has the potential to negatively affect human cognition. Besides being evident in the context of media multitasking, Liebherr et al. point out that the mere presence of the smartphone can already have effects on cognition.

Influence on attention by the mere presence and availability of the smartphone

Some of the research claims that even the mere presence or the availability of a smartphone, without having an interaction with it, may already be distracting. Although many of the following studies claim to examine the influence of the effect of the mere smartphone presence, it should be noted that most of these studies only examine the influence of smartphone availability. Smartphone availability describes the continuing ability to receive messages and notifications, while the mere smartphone presence describes a smartphone that is turned off, so that no messages and notifications can be received. In contradiction to that, more recent research does not support the hypothesis that the mere presence of a smartphone influences attention.

First, it was Thornton et al. who found a distracting effect of the smartphone by its mere presence. Students in presence of a turned-on smartphone performed poorly in neuropsychological tests compared to students that did the tasks without the presence of a smartphone. A distracting effect of smartphone presence/availability could also be shown in social interactions. It was shown that the presence/availability of the smartphone forms an interference with the formation of relationships in people by inhibiting the development of interpersonal closeness and familiarity.

Research also shows that the mere smartphone presence and the availability influences working memory capacity and fluid intelligence, which leads to lower attention. Ward et al. shows in a series of studies that smartphone availability depletes cognitive resources and that the consumption of cognitive resources is high even when subjects manage to continue to gather their attention, for example, when they are not looking at their smartphones. In addition to that, results indicate that only the location (desk, pocket/bag, or other room) of the smartphone affected the performance of the subjects. However, there was no effect of smartphone power (smartphone turned off vs. smartphone turned on) on the interference effect of smartphone presence.

Negative effects on cognitive functions due to smartphone availability could also be examined by Ito and Kawahara. The results show that the group of subjects performing a visual-spatial task under smartphone presence takes longer on average to complete the task. Smartphone availability also influences students’ learning and memory. It was shown that subjects without smartphones had a higher recall accuracy compared to those with smartphones. In addition, it was highlighted that the presence/availability of a smartphone and many conscious thoughts of the smartphone impaired memory performance and information retrieval.

Canale et al. investigated whether individual differences in emotion-related impulsivity traits influenced the effect of smartphone availability on cognitive performance. Here, the effect of smartphone availability on cognition could only be detected when the smartphone was turned on. No effect was found when the smartphone was turned off. In both conditions, the smartphone was on the table and the smartphone that was turned on was muted. Therefore, Canale et al. suggest that attentional capacities and visual working memory capacities are associated with incoming messages, or the possibility of receiving them.

Liu et al. tested the relationship between the effect of the phone’s presence on attention and phone activeness, which is defined as the phone’s physical contact state (on desk or held in hand) and the phone’s power state (control, turned on, turned off). Therefore, Liu et al. used a dual-task paradigm, namely the “letter recognition task” and the “luminance-change detection task”. In this way, the influence of smartphone presence on basic perceptual processes was assessed, which builds the precondition for attentional performances. The results suggest that even a minimal awareness of the presence of a phone, including a switched-off smartphone, can cause a distraction.

Recent research also suggests that the effect of smartphone presence or availability on attentional functioning is only present in high-level tasks and not in low-level attentional tasks. Low-level or basal attentional performance describe the ability to recognize and differentiate between stimuli, as well as to select these stimuli and show a reaction to these (e.g. crossing out stimuli, as in the d2-R). High-level tasks involve meta-cognitive decisions, e.g. reacting on changing demands. Thornton et al. did a study with high attentionally demanding tasks and low attentionally demanding tasks. Here, the negative effect of smartphone availability on attentional processes was only found in the context of high-level tasks. Ito and Kawahara corroborate these findings. Canale et al. found that the more demanding a task, the stronger the interference effects on the subjects' cognitive performance.

Schwaiger and Tahir tested the effect of smartphone presence on undergraduate students on several simple and complex attentional tasks as well as on a non-verbal reasoning task. Participants undertook these tests in 4 conditions (phone face up, phone face down, phone in bag or pocket, phone in another room). However, the authors do not define smartphone power (turned-on or turned-off). They found out that the presence had no impact on simple attentional tasks (and fluid non-verbal intelligence), as well as the smartphone presence had no influence on fluid intelligence. However, an effect while solving a more complex attentional task on students was shown: students experienced higher difficulty when their phone was present.

Furthermore, research also states that the effect of smartphone presence and availability on cognition is moderated by several other constructs, such as smartphone dependence and addiction, Internet use/attachment or excessive smartphone use. Findings show that strong smartphone users or users that show a tendency to smartphone dependence are more likely to be affected by the effect of the smartphone availability on attentional processes or cognitive functions.

Contrary to that, more recent research does not clearly support that smartphone presence influences attention. For example, Hartmann et al. tested the effect of smartphone presence on different memory functions, namely short-term memory and prospective memory. No overall effect was found for smartphone presence on short-term and prospective memory performance. However, results show that for participants with low smartphone dependency, performance was better when the smartphone was absent than when the smartphone was present. These results show that the effect of smartphone presence that was shown for working memory cannot be generalized for other domains of memory capacity, such as short-term memory and prospective memory.

Ruiz Pardo and Minda did a replication of the study by Ward et al. (2017) and used the same tasks and conditions that Ward et al. used in their second experiment. Ruiz Pardo and Minda could not replicate the findings of Ward et al. and did not find differences between the different smartphone location conditions (on desk, in pocket/bag, outside the testing room), neither on the o-span task, nor on the go/no-go task. Ruiz Pardo and Minda conclude that the presence of one’s phone may not be enough to affect cognitive performance.

The current research

The present research aims to contribute to the field of smartphone presence leading to lower cognitive functioning. In particular, it will be investigated whether the mere presence of the smartphone affects attention while the smartphone is turned off. This study is conducted to investigate whether the smartphone presence influences the attention of college students. There have been only few studies on the influence of the turned-off smartphone on attention, which is why this work can make an important contribution to the existing research. In addition to the recording of attention performance under the presence of a smartphone, the smartphone dependence of the subjects is also assessed. As smartphone dependence played a crucial role in other research and influenced the effects of the smartphone presence and availability on attention, it should also be considered here.

The current state of research does not clearly show whether the mere presence of a smartphone influences attention. Many circumstances of this effect are still unclear, which is why this study is a contribution to the question of the smartphone being an influence on attention. Furthermore, recent studies, that proved an influence of the smartphone presence on attention, suggest that there is only an effect of smartphone presence and availability on cognitive functions in the context of high-level tasks. On the other hand, it is unclear whether basal skills are affected by the interference effects of smartphone presence. Therefore, the present study examines the possibility that smartphone presence may already have an effect on basal attentional processes. The concentration and attention test used represents a test that examines basal functions and attentional processes. The present paper can give more insights into the circumstances that lead to lower cognitive functioning while the smartphone is present.

It is hypothesized that the mere presence of the smartphone affects attention, which could lead to poorer cognitive performance. The allocation of attentional resources might be divided between the central task and the smartphone. As presented in the Cognitive Load Theory, the smartphone could represent an additional cognitive load in the form of an extraneous load. If attention is used because it is directed to the smartphone and cognitive resources are depleted, resources will be missing from it and performance to complete tasks will be negatively affected.