For example, the sudden onset of a new sound in the environment, such as a ringing phone, could automatically recruit attentional resources from other ongoing activity. This orienting process is often elicited by novelty being introduced into the environment or as a result of changes in the existing situation ( Cowan, 1995). In this situation, attentional resources were re-allocated due to an individual's involuntary response to new incoming information. Indeed, previous research revealed that the presence of novel sounds in the environment led to delayed responses to an ongoing visual activity ( Escera, Alho, Winkler, & Näätänen, 1998). In this case, central executive resources were used by the cognitive system to attend to a chosen set of information ( Cowan, 1995).Īlternatively, the response to a ringing cell phone may be primarily associated with an involuntary orienting response that is characterized by a brief distraction from ongoing activity. For example, cell phone conversations were shown to disrupt performance on a secondary task, and the authors concluded that the conversations required voluntary attentional control processes that recruited resources from other ongoing activities ( Strayer & Johnson, 2001). In support of the role of voluntary attentional control processes, the cognitive response to a ringing cell phone may be similar to the costs observed when individuals engage in cell phone conversations. Research has demonstrated that only a limited amount of information can be attended to at any given moment, and the content of this information is determined by either a voluntary attentional control process or an involuntary orienting response ( Cowan, 1995). The second aim was to evaluate how this commonly encountered noise in the environment would affect performance on real-world activities. First, we were interested in better understanding the cognitive response to a cell phone ring by assessing the temporal nature of the distraction and by isolating the cognitive factors associated with this distraction. There were two primary goals for the present research. However, research has not addressed the potential distracting effects of the cell phone ring itself. Recent research has focused on the detrimental effects of cell phone conversations on driving performance ( Strayer & Johnston, 2001 Strayer, Drews, & Johnston, 2003 Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006), leading to the conclusion that the attentional resources drawn away from the driving field can lead to poor driving performance. exceeding 262 million ( CTIA International Wireless Association, 2008), the growing prevalence of cell phones in daily life has generated interest in research on this topic.
With the estimated number of cell phone users in the U.S. These findings offer insight into top-down cognitive processes that moderate involuntary orienting responses associated with a common stimulus encountered in the environment.
Performance on a surprise quiz revealed low accuracy rates on material presented while the phone was ringing. This investigation continued in a college classroom setting (Experiments 3a and 3b) students were exposed to a ringing cell phone during the lecture. In Experiment 2, participants who were warned about the potential for distraction recovered more quickly, suggesting a benefit of this prior knowledge. In Experiment 1, slower responses were observed in all auditory groups relative to a silence condition, but participants in the ring and song conditions recovered more slowly. In Experiments 1 and 2, the effects of different types of sounds (a standard cell phone ring, irrelevant tones and an instrumental song commonly encountered by participants) on performance were examined. The detrimental effects of a ringing phone on cognitive performance were investigated in four experiments.
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