Now, a newly released study in the Journalof Environmental Psychology finds that only the call of a cell phoneappears to be equally distracting, particularly when it comes in aclassroom setting or includes a familiar song as a ringtone. "In any circumstance where people are stressful to gain knowledge and tryingto retain that data in some way, a distraction that may just seemlike a common annoyance to people may receive a truly disruptive effecton their later retention of that information," said the study's mainauthor, Jill Shelton, a postdoctoral psychology fellow in Arts &Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. The bailiwick includes an experiment in which Shelton poses as a studentseated in the center of a crowded undergraduate psychology lecture andallows a cell phone in her purse to keep ringing loudly for about30 seconds. Students tested later scored about 25 percent worse for return of coursecontent presented during the distraction, even though the sameinformation was covered by the professor just previous to the phone ringand projected as text in a slide show shown throughout the distraction.Students scored even worse when Shelton added to the disturbance byfrantically searching her purse as if attempting to obtain and silenceher ringing phone. "A bit of of us take a cell phone ringing in a public order to bean annoying disruption, but this work confirms that these nuisancenoises also have real-life impacts," Shelton said. "These seeminglyinnocuous events are not only a distraction, but they take a realinfluence on learning." Titled "The distracting effects of a resonance cell phone: Aninvestigation of the lab and the classroom setting," the studywas conducted at Louisiana State University, where Shelton received herdoctoral degree. Her co-authors in the LSU psychology department includeEmily Elliott, Sharon Eaves and Amanda Exner. The study explores cognitive differences in how we react to auditorydistractions, specifically whether we process these interruptions using avoluntary, top-down, executive-level shift in aid or as a morereflexive, automatic and involuntary reorientation of attention. Perhaps most surprising, the discipline observed that unexpected exposure tosnippets of a popular song, such as those frequently used as ringtones, canhave an even-longer-lasting negative affect on attention. In this form of the experiment, students in a laboratory were tested onsimple word-recognition tasks while exposed to a place of auditorydistractions, including irrelevant tones, standard cell phone rings andparts of a strain very fellow to most LSU students. The song, aninstrumental version of the LSU fight song, was then being playedincessantly around campus as LSU football made its fall 2007 run to thenational college championship. The song also became a popular cell phoneringtone. "When we played the fight song as function of our lab experiments, thedistraction factor lasted longer," Shelton said. "It slowed down theirdecision-making performance for a longer time than even a standardringtone." Thus, people who use popular songs as a personal ringtone appears to beincreasing the odds their cell phone rings will be more distracting."Depending on how familiar people are with these songs, it could lead toan even worse impairment in their cognitive performance," she said. The report raises concerns for people who seek to concentrate whilebeing bombarded by beeps and buzzes from incoming email or textmessages. Findings suggest the potentiality for distraction is greater ifthe ring tone has some special meaning or personal relevance, such as acustom tone that identifies a visit as coming from a parent, close friendor boss at work. On the shiny side, students in repeated trials of the experimenteventually were able to stop the distracting effects of both standardand song-based cell phone rings, gradually reducing cognitive impairmentcaused by them. "There's definitely some grounds to indicate that mass can becomehabituated to a distracting noise," Shelton said. "If you're in anoffice where the phones are just ringing all the time everyday, it mayinitially be distracting to you, but you will likely get over it." While these findings have enough of material world implications, they alsoshed light on whether a volunteer or involuntary model best describescognitive lapses caused by nuisance noises. Recent inquiry has shown that talking on a cell phone while drivingresults in good consequences, such as slower braking responses andincreased risks of running red lights and collisions - effectsattributed to phone conversation absorbing important voluntaryattentional resources required to answer to information in the drivingfield. The unexpected ringing of a phone, conversely, might be explained usingthe involuntary model, one that views our answer as a more automatic,almost reflexive re-orienting of attentional resources, and a processover which we possess little control. Shelton suggests that our reaction to a resonance cell phone may involve acombination of these cognitive responses depending on the situation andwhether the call is unexpected. In one of her lab experiments, sheobserved that participants who were warned about the potential fordistraction were able to find more rapidly and control their levelsof cognitive impairment. "Our experiments indicate that there is a profit to previous knowledgein how we answer to nuisance noises," Shelton said. "It doesn't meanyou won't have a break to what you were doing for that briefperiod, but your cognitive system can adapt and get back on task fairlyquickly."
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