Revisiting The “Brain Drain” Effect: Having A Phone On The Desk Doesn’t Always Impair Our Memory

By Emma Young We all know that using a smartphone interferes with our ability to focus on other things — like driving. But in 2017, a surprising result made international headlines: the mere presence of a switched off smartphone on the desk can impair working memory. Now a new study in Consciousness and Cognition, which has partially replicated and extended this investigation, has not found evidence to support the “brain drain” effect. However, the researchers, led by Matthias Hartmann at University of Bern, Switzerland, say that we shouldn’t start putting our phones back on our desks just yet. The 2017 study was led by Adrian Ward at the University of Texas, Austin. His team found that people who’d been instructed to put their phones in another room performed significantly better on tests designed to measure their cognitive capacity than those who had their phones on the desk. They also did slightly better than participants who’d put their phone in a pocket or bag. It didn’t matter whether their phones were off or on or face up or down; just having the phone easily accessible meant that people had to resist the impulse to use it, which used some of their available cognitive capacity, the team concluded. This meant they had less to spare on the tasks, which drew on working memory. Hartmann and his colleagues decided to investigate possible impacts on two other types of memory: short term memory and also prospective memory — remembering to...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Memory Technology Source Type: blogs