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Smartphone Notifications Can Impair Concentration: Study

Smartphone Notifications Can Impair Concentration: Study

By Press Trust of India | Updated: 13 July 2015 18:10 IST

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All those Facebook and email notifications you get on your smartphone are increasing your chances of committing mistakes in a task, a new study suggests.

Just receiving a simple notification on your cellphone can cause enough of a distraction to impair your ability to focus on a given task, researchers said.

The distraction caused by a notification - whether it is a sound or a vibration - is comparable to the effects seen when users actively use their cellphones to make calls or send text messages, they said.

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"The level of how much it affected the task at hand was really shocking," said Courtney Yehnert, a Florida State University (FSU) research coordinator.

"Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance," the researchers said.

"Cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task," they said.

The study underscores that simply being aware of a missed call or text can have the same effect.

The findings are significant because many public information campaigns intend to deter problematic cellphone use - while driving, for example - often emphasise waiting to respond to messages and calls.

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