Does the Mere Presence of a Smartphone Drain Attention?

Through the present paper, the possibility of a strong negative influence by the smartphone is investigated. Especially college students can be negatively influenced by the heavy use of the smartphone. The work presented here shows one consequence of the smartphone’s integration into the everyday life of students: the loss of attention. It provides evidence that even the mere presence of one’s smartphone consumes cognitive resources, without willingly shifting attention or actively using the smartphone. In the test situation, there was no visible interaction with the smartphone, as the smartphone was not looked at or picked up. This work was able to show in more detail to what extent attention performance is negatively affected: it was found that people show a slower work speed in the presence of a smartphone. New findings were obtained regarding the influence of smartphone presence on attention in the context of complex and non-complex tasks. Contrary to the previous state of research, a strong influence of smartphone presence was found in the context of tasks that require basal attentional processes, which is a new finding in this area. Since previous research cannot clearly show whether the mere presence of a smartphone influences attention, the results of this study represent a contribution to this and support the assumption that smartphone presence is a negative influence on attention.

The theoretical framework presented here proposes the consumption of cognitive resources as an explanation for the different performances. As the theoretical presentation of the executive functions show, the cognitive resources of humans are limited. Thus, the limited resources must be divided. According to the Cognitive Load Theory, resources are consumed by different types and amounts of cognitive loads, which consequently leads to different cognitive performances. The fact that attention was visible from the outside, but the subjects' performance was nevertheless lower in the presence of the smartphone, provides evidence of an invisible consumption of cognitive resources. According to Sweller’s categories for the classification of loads, the smartphone presence can represent an extraneous load, as it is independent of the task and the content to be processed. The additional load represented by the smartphone consumes cognitive resources that are consequently no longer available to process further information. The additional load of the smartphone can thus be used to identify the reason for the negative influence of the smartphone on attention and consequently the lower performance under smartphone presence.

Other studies have already shown that attention and performance decreases when a task is performed while the smartphone was available, which means that there was still the possibility to receive messages and notifications. The present study provides evidence that even the mere presence of one’s smartphone consumes cognitive resources, without any voluntary shift of attention or active use of the smartphone. The present findings are consistent with previous research findings that showed a reduction of attention and performance due to the presence/availability of the smartphone. Additionally, Ito and Kawahara found that subjects show slower performance when a smartphone is available. The present work can corroborate and extent the findings of Ito and Kawahara, as it could be shown that even the mere presence of the smartphone has the discovered effect of cognitive interference and lead to a slower work pace.

Moreover, Koessmeier and Büttner tested the mere presence effect of the smartphone while also tracking visual distraction that might be caused by smartphone presence. Participants wore mobile eye tracking glasses while performing cognitive tasks and reading tasks in smartphone presence and absence. Negative effects of smartphone presence on performance could not be replicated. During the task, participants almost never looked at their smartphone. Only during breaks and transitions between tasks, people drew their visual attention to their smartphones. Results show that the presence of the smartphone increased smartphone vigilance, however, this did not influence task performance. Koessmeier and Büttner conclude that people can regulate the visual attention that they pay to smartphones.