The Effects of Cell Phone Conversations on the Attention and Memory of Bystanders

Abstract

The pervasive use of cell phones impacts many people–both cell phone users and bystanders exposed to conversations. This 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.

Effects of Task Interruption and Background Speech on Word Processed Writing

“…The finding that dialogues are more disruptive than halfalogues runs contrary to what was found in Emberson et al (), Galván et al () and Norman and Bennett (). One possible explanation for the difference in results between these extant studies and the current study may be found in the task the participants conducted.…”

“…As dialogues overall contain more semantic information than halfalogues, and the speech stream unfolds during a more steady pace over time, a straightforward hypothesis would be that dialogues are more disruptive than halfalogues. However, Norman and Bennett (), Galván, Vessal and Golley () and Emberson, Lupyan, Goldstein and Spivey () exposed their participants to halfalogues and dialogues while the participants were conducting an anagram task (Galván et al, ), a reaction time task and a visual monitoring task (Emberson et al, ) or no task at all (Norman & Bennett, ). Self‐rating measures of annoyance and distraction in these studies suggested, perhaps counterintuitively, that halfalogues are more disruptive than dialogues.…”

Why are background telephone conversations distracting?

“…Moreover, several objective measures have reinforced these subjective ratings: Cognitive performance is differentially affected by halfalogues and dialogues. For example, Emberson, Lupyan, Goldstein, and Spivey (2010; see also Galván, Vessal, & Golley, 2013) found that ignoring a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Telephone Distraction 4 halfalogue as compared with a dialogue disrupted performance on a visual monitoring (tracking) task and a choice reaction task.…”

Chatting in the face of the eyewitness: The impact of extraneous cell-phone conversation on memory for a perpetrator.

“…Moreover, cognitive performance Background Speech Impairs Face Memory 4 can be differentially affected by halfalogues and dialogues. For example, Emberson, Lupyan, Goldstein, and Spivey (2010; see also Galvan, Vessal, & Golley, 2013) found that ignoring a halfalogue as compared with a dialogue produced disruption to performance on a visual monitoring (tracking) task and a choice reaction task. While the existing evidence suggests that overhearing half of a cell-phone conversation is enough to reduce performance on a concurrent, attentionally-demanding task, there has been no attempt to investigate the potential impact of ignoring cell-phone conversations on the recall of complex visual information in more applied tasks such as following the witnessing of a (staged) crime.…”