As someone who doesn't really use the "smart" portion of the smartphone I found the Appendix to be more interesting.
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Accordingly, we excluded data from participants who reported not owning a smartphone (n = 3 in Experiment 1; n = 11 in Experiment 2).
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14 people (2.5%?), around 21 years old, found to not own a smartphone in Chicago??
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“How much money would it take for you to give up watching television for a full day?”—an item assessing the subjective value of a digital device that is not one’s smartphone—revealed no interaction between Phone Location and Television Value, F(2, 247) = 0.15, p = .86.
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Do the youth of Chicago not follow the general trend of not caring for television?
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Note that we also collected self-reported number of tweets sent per day as a potential measure of use frequency. However, we found that this was not a viable indicator of smartphone use; 88.6% of participants reported sending 0 tweets per day, 6.6% reported sending between .1 and 1 tweets per day (inclusive), and only 4.8% reported sending more than 1 tweet per day.
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Why tweets sent? They could have asked about "messages sent on social media", "tweets viewed", or "cat videos" or something else that would have given a real measure.
Such an odd measure to pick.
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A one-way ANOVA on participants’ responses to the question “While completing today’s tasks, how often were you thinking about your cellphone?” (1 = not at all to 7 = constantly/the whole time) revealed no effect of Phone Location on phone-related thoughts (F(2, 514) = .84, p = .43). Notably, the modal self-reported frequency of thinking about one’s phone in each condition was “not at all.” Combined with the significant effect of Phone Location on available cognitive capacity, these results support our proposition that the mere presence of one’s smartphone may impair cognitive functioning even when it does not occupy the contents of consciousness.
```
It's also interesting that conscious thought had no bearing on the result.
Perhaps the subconscious is constantly on the active lookout for audiovisual signals that they have received a new notification?
```
For example, we find that the effect of smartphone salience on cognitive capacity is robust to both the visibility of the phone’s screen (face down in experiment 1, face up in experiment 2) and the phone’s power (silent vs. powered off in experiment 2), suggesting that intuitive “fixes” such as placing one’s phone face down or turning it off are likely futile. However, our data suggest at least one simple solution: separation. Although this approach may seem at odds with prior research indicating that being separated from one’s phone undermines performance by increasing anxiety (Cheever et al. 2014; Clayton et al. 2015), we note that participants in those studies were unexpectedly separated from their phones (Cheever et al. 2014) and forced to hear them ring while being unable to answer (Clayton et al. 2015). In contrast, participants in our experiments expected to be separated from their phones (this was the norm in the lab) and were not confronted with unanswerable notifications or calls while separated. We therefore suggest that defined and protected periods of separation, such as these, may allow consumers to perform better not just by reducing interruptions but also by increasing available cognitive capacity.
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They did argue that turning off the phone would mean that the participants certainly can't be expecting a notification. But then, wouldn't the autonomous systems simply be trained on the presence of the phone rather than its actual state? Given that most of the time the phone would be turned on so the autonomous systems wouldn't have had the chance to learn differentiating such a thing.
Like the difference between the subconscious handling cycling a bike, and doing a wheelie.
Perchance, the autonomous systems are unable to discern, due to inadequate training, that the phone cannot generate notifications in such a state and is therefore still preoccupied, on alert, solely due to the presence of the phone?
Would be interesting to see if simply the image of their phone being within their visual range would have the same result.
Would also be interesting to see the actual demographic breakdown of the results and, given proven effects on compulsive behaviour, especially socially related behaviour, and the tendencies of university students in this regard, the hormonal levels of participants.
Indeed I like to banish my phone whenever possible . . . love the simplicity of 10 squats every 45 minutes . . . and I LOVE lemon in my water . . . Btw Many medications raise blood sugar just as statins do. Not sure why that is, but it's a built-in morbidity maker. The list includes corticosteroids, antipsychotics, and many common blood pressure medications (as with statins, the side effect of diabetes risk is a more relevant factor in CVD than what the pill is treating). The film was hilarious: Thanks because laughter is medicine :)) They were following their British countryman Mr. William Banting who popularized low carb eating a century before.
As someone who doesn't really use the "smart" portion of the smartphone I found the Appendix to be more interesting.
```
Accordingly, we excluded data from participants who reported not owning a smartphone (n = 3 in Experiment 1; n = 11 in Experiment 2).
```
14 people (2.5%?), around 21 years old, found to not own a smartphone in Chicago??
```
“How much money would it take for you to give up watching television for a full day?”—an item assessing the subjective value of a digital device that is not one’s smartphone—revealed no interaction between Phone Location and Television Value, F(2, 247) = 0.15, p = .86.
```
Do the youth of Chicago not follow the general trend of not caring for television?
```
Note that we also collected self-reported number of tweets sent per day as a potential measure of use frequency. However, we found that this was not a viable indicator of smartphone use; 88.6% of participants reported sending 0 tweets per day, 6.6% reported sending between .1 and 1 tweets per day (inclusive), and only 4.8% reported sending more than 1 tweet per day.
```
Why tweets sent? They could have asked about "messages sent on social media", "tweets viewed", or "cat videos" or something else that would have given a real measure.
Such an odd measure to pick.
```
A one-way ANOVA on participants’ responses to the question “While completing today’s tasks, how often were you thinking about your cellphone?” (1 = not at all to 7 = constantly/the whole time) revealed no effect of Phone Location on phone-related thoughts (F(2, 514) = .84, p = .43). Notably, the modal self-reported frequency of thinking about one’s phone in each condition was “not at all.” Combined with the significant effect of Phone Location on available cognitive capacity, these results support our proposition that the mere presence of one’s smartphone may impair cognitive functioning even when it does not occupy the contents of consciousness.
```
It's also interesting that conscious thought had no bearing on the result.
Perhaps the subconscious is constantly on the active lookout for audiovisual signals that they have received a new notification?
```
For example, we find that the effect of smartphone salience on cognitive capacity is robust to both the visibility of the phone’s screen (face down in experiment 1, face up in experiment 2) and the phone’s power (silent vs. powered off in experiment 2), suggesting that intuitive “fixes” such as placing one’s phone face down or turning it off are likely futile. However, our data suggest at least one simple solution: separation. Although this approach may seem at odds with prior research indicating that being separated from one’s phone undermines performance by increasing anxiety (Cheever et al. 2014; Clayton et al. 2015), we note that participants in those studies were unexpectedly separated from their phones (Cheever et al. 2014) and forced to hear them ring while being unable to answer (Clayton et al. 2015). In contrast, participants in our experiments expected to be separated from their phones (this was the norm in the lab) and were not confronted with unanswerable notifications or calls while separated. We therefore suggest that defined and protected periods of separation, such as these, may allow consumers to perform better not just by reducing interruptions but also by increasing available cognitive capacity.
```
They did argue that turning off the phone would mean that the participants certainly can't be expecting a notification. But then, wouldn't the autonomous systems simply be trained on the presence of the phone rather than its actual state? Given that most of the time the phone would be turned on so the autonomous systems wouldn't have had the chance to learn differentiating such a thing.
Like the difference between the subconscious handling cycling a bike, and doing a wheelie.
Perchance, the autonomous systems are unable to discern, due to inadequate training, that the phone cannot generate notifications in such a state and is therefore still preoccupied, on alert, solely due to the presence of the phone?
Would be interesting to see if simply the image of their phone being within their visual range would have the same result.
Would also be interesting to see the actual demographic breakdown of the results and, given proven effects on compulsive behaviour, especially socially related behaviour, and the tendencies of university students in this regard, the hormonal levels of participants.
Thanks so much Joseph! <3
Indeed I like to banish my phone whenever possible . . . love the simplicity of 10 squats every 45 minutes . . . and I LOVE lemon in my water . . . Btw Many medications raise blood sugar just as statins do. Not sure why that is, but it's a built-in morbidity maker. The list includes corticosteroids, antipsychotics, and many common blood pressure medications (as with statins, the side effect of diabetes risk is a more relevant factor in CVD than what the pill is treating). The film was hilarious: Thanks because laughter is medicine :)) They were following their British countryman Mr. William Banting who popularized low carb eating a century before.