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Researchers had people work with the phone off and upside down on the table, in a bag under the chair, or in a separate room. Focus was fine in all three conditions. Cognitive flexibility with the material dropped whenever the phone was in the same room, even with no calls or notifications.
Focusing takes more energy with the phone near, as if a subscript runs in the brain, anticipating that the phone is going to reach out and call. It calls even when it isn't calling. Getting the phone out of the room increases focus and cognitive capacity.
Visual field matters too. Helmets were once designed to narrow the view of kids who had trouble focusing, and a phone defeats that idea, because it puts the whole world right in front of the person.
What study tested phones in the room?
A widely cited 2017 study from Adrian Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin tested about 800 smartphone users. Participants did computer tasks with their phone on the desk, in a pocket or bag, or in another room. Those with the phone in another room scored highest on measures of available working memory. The paper appeared in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research under the title Brain Drain.
Why does a silent phone still pull attention?
People notice personally significant signals even when they are ignoring everything else, a phenomenon called the cocktail party effect. In a 1959 experiment, Neville Moray found that about a third of participants noticed their own name in a stream of speech they had been told to ignore. A phone is tied to messages, news, and social life, so it is a highly significant cue. Keeping it out of mind takes continuous effort.
Why does switching tasks cost so much focus?
Experiments by Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer, and Jeffrey Evans in 2001 showed that people take measurably longer and make more errors right after switching tasks. Sophie Leroy, a business school researcher, described attention residue in 2009. Part of a person's attention stays on the previous task even after they have moved on. The cost grows when the previous task was unfinished.
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