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The effect of cellphones on attention and learning: The influences of time,

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DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2018.04.027

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 Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Full length article

The effect of cellphones on attention and learning: The influences of

time, distraction, and nomophobia
Jessica S. Mendoza a, Benjamin C. Pody a, Seungyeon Lee b, Minsung Kim c,
Ian M. McDonough a, *
a
The University of Alabama, Department of Psychology, 505 Hackberry Lane, BOX 870348, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
b
University of Arkansas at Monticello, School of Social & Behavioral Sciences, 346 University Drive, Monticello, AR 71656, USA
c
Buros Center for Testing, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, 21 Teachers College Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0348, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Excessive cellphone use impacts attention and learning in classrooms. Given that attention declines over
Received 13 November 2017 time, we investigated when during lecture cellphones might impair learning. Across two experiments,
Received in revised form participants watched a 20-min lecture under different cellphone conditions (keep or remove). Groups
4 April 2018
who kept their cellphones received distracting text messages during the lecture. Participants were
Accepted 12 April 2018
Available online 14 April 2018
quizzed on the lecture. Quiz questions were divided into four segments depending on when the material
was presented. Lastly, participants' nomophobiadthe fear of being without access to one's cellpho-
nedwas assessed. Participants who kept their cellphone performed worse on the quiz for material
Keywords:
Attention
presented in the 3rd quarter of the lecture than those without cellphones. Distracted participants per-
Cellphone formed worse on the test for the same material than those who were not distracted. Participants higher
Classroom in nomophobia, especially on subscales having to do with losing connectedness and giving up conve-
Learning nience, performed worse on the quiz for material that occurred in the 3rd quarter of the lecture. Findings
Memory indicate that having cellphones in a short lecture has its largest impact on attention and learning 10
Nomophobia e15 min into the lecture. This study provides novel insights into the interactions between technology
and learning to help educators and students optimize learning.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. When cellphones disrupt attention and learning: the
influences of time, distraction, and nomophobia
Although cellphones have been shown to produce a negative
impact on students’ learning, they continue to play a major role in
the lives of American college students. According to the Pew
Research Center, 72% of Americans and a global average of 43% of
individuals report owning a cellphone (Poushter, 2016). Addition-
ally, three quarters of Americans use the internet on the cellphone
several times a day, averaging at least 5 h per day (Andrews, Ellis,
Shaw, & Piwek, 2015; Smith, 2011, 2015). Moreover, young adults
between the ages of 18e24 send or receive an average of 109 text
messages per day (Smith, 2011). Although cellphones have other
features such as voice call and web browsing, text messaging ap-
pears to be the most convenient method of communication among
young adults. Such excessive cellphone use has brought researchers
to focus on how this usage impacts learning and memory in
classroom settings. While most research has focused on how
memory and learning are impaired by the use or distraction of
cellphones, this study focuses on when attention is most likely to be
impaired by cellphone distractions. By understanding the in-
teractions between technology and attention, educators and stu-
dents can optimize learning.

List of abbreviations: DSM-V, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dis-
orders; TED, technology, entertainment, design; NMP-Q, Nomophobia
Questionnaire.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jsmendoza@crimson.ua.edu (J.S. Mendoza), bcpody@gmail.
com (B.C. Pody), LeeS@uamont.edu (S. Lee), mkim@buros.org (M. Kim),
immcdonough@ua.edu (I.M. McDonough).
2. Attention and cellphones in the classroom
Attention is optimal when individuals are focused on one task at
a time. However, with many competing sources vying for our
attention, both inside and outside the classroom, multitasking has
become the norm for most members of younger generations

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.04.027
0747-5632/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
(Carrier, Cheever, Rosen, Benitez, & Chang, 2009). Many students
report browsing the internet or shopping online while completing
coursework. Social media usage is also a popular activity among
millennials who use their cellphones (Carrier et al., 2009; Lenhart,
Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010). Using cellphones for social media
or other non-academic activities might pose a threat to learning in
the classroom.
Basic models of information processing propose that to effec-
tively encode information to long-term memory, an individual
must first process sensory information from the environment (e.g.,
a lecture) and then selectively pay attention to the target infor-
mation (key concepts) while ignoring distractions (e.g., cellphone
notifications) in that environment (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).
If one is unable to selectively pay attention, then that important
information runs the risk of not being encoded and later retrieved
when needed (Drew, Vo ~ , & Wolfe, 2013; Dudukovic, DuBrow, &
Wagner, 2009; Kuznekoff & Titsworth, 2013). However, people
have limits to how much information they can process at a given
time (Broadbent, 1958, 1971; Cowan, 2012). That is, attention acts as
a bottleneckda lot of information is available, but only a small
portion of that information is attended to and processed (e.g.,
Cowan, 2012; Sperling, 1960).
Additionally, research has indicated that attention is not always
constant throughout a given task. Rather, attention and associated
learning strategies are greater when information is first pre-
senteddknown as the primacy effect (Li, 2010; Morrison, Conway,
& Chein, 2014; Murdock, 1962; Watkins, Watkins, & Crowder, 1974).
Furthermore, attention often declines after these initial learning
periods (Warm, Parasuraman, & Matthews, 2008), making it diffi-
cult to sustain attention at a high level. For example, fast
responding to stimuli during a sustained attention task has been
associated with lapses in attention (Robertson, Manly, Andrade,
Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997; deBettencourt, Cohen, Lee, Norman, &
Turk-Browne, 2015). Recently, deBettencourt, Norman, and Turk-
Browne (2017) showed that lapses in sustained attention impact
memory. They found that faster responding during encoding (i.e.,
their indicator for lapses in attention) led to poorer memory for
those same items. Despite attempts at sustaining attention, in most
traditional classroom settings, attention often begins to decline
after about 10e15 min (Benjamin, 2002, pp. 57e67; McKeachie &
Svinicki, 2006, pp. 57e63). This pattern of sustained attention in
lecture settings has been observed through observation, self-
report, and psychological measures (Wilson & Korn, 2007).
In the context of classroom lectures, students not only need to
sustain attention for long periods of time, but are often faced with
distractions, including cellphones, which require the rapid
switching of attention and multitasking. However, multitasking is
well known to incur cognitive costs due to the effortful and time-
consuming processes of switching from one task to another (e.g.,
Monsell, 2003). On the other hand, Salvucci and Taatgen (2011)
propose that many of the experimental paradigms used to assess
these multitasking costs do not clearly represent the majority of
real-world situations. Instead, they argue that, in most cases
outside the laboratory, people can activate multiple goals simul-
taneously without a sacrifice in performance (Salvucci & Taatgen,
2008, 2011). In their theory of threaded cognition (Salvucci &
Taatgen, 2008), they propose that people have multiple “threads”
of cognition that enable parallel multitasking abilities as long as
each thread does not share the underlying cognitive, perceptual, or
motor resources necessary for each task. Once the resources begin
to overlap among concurrent tasks, one thread must wait for the
other to be completed or the performance of each thread will be
negatively impacted. Because they propose that most real-world
situations are comprised of the type of parallel multitasking that
involves non-overlapping resources, they emphasized the need to
53
test these ideas in applied and complex environments (Salvucci &
Taatgen, 2008, 2011). The classroom serves as a testbed for these
ideas.
Research has suggested that attention in applied and complex
environments can be diminished when shifting from one activity to
another. For example, a 3.8 s delay occurs when adjusting one's
focus from using a cellphone back to a cognitively demanding task,
such as driving (Thapa, Codjoe, Ishak, & McCarter, 2015). Re-
searchers concluded that students who use their cellphones and
text in the classroom took 30% fewer notes than those who were
asked not to use their cellphones (Froese et al., 2012). Likewise,
several studies have demonstrated that the mere presence of a
cellphone diminishes attention (Dietz & Henrich, 2014; Lee, Kim,
McDonough, Mendoza, & Kim, 2017; Thornton, Faires, Robbins, &
Rollins, 2014; Ward, Duke, Gneezy, & Bos, 2017). One particular
study manipulated the location of participants' cellphones while
completing cognitive performance measures and found that the
closer cellphones were to participants while completing the task,
the lower their scores were on those measures (Ward et al., 2017).
Even when a cellphone is out of sight, hearing the ringtone can be
detrimental to attentional resources. For example, studies have
shown that when a cellphone rang during a lecture, individuals
scored lower on tests related to the lecture content as compared to
individuals who were not disrupted by a ringing cellphone (End,
Worthman, Mathews, & Wetterau, 2010; Shelton, Elliot, Eaves, &
Exner, 2009). Additional research has shown that receiving a
notification alone can significantly disrupt performance on a task
that requires attention (Stothart, Mitchum, & Yehnert, 2015). Thus,
in a classroom setting, a large body of literature suggests that
attending to both a lecture and to one's cellphone leads to a sharing
of cognitive resources, thus resulting in multitasking interference.
3. Cellphones and feelings of anxiety
These attentional costs are more likely to occur in younger
generations of students who feel socially dependent on their cell-
phone (e.g., millennials). This dependence can give rise to anxiety
when one has not checked their cellphone for a while (Cheever,
Rosen, Carrier, & Chavez, 2014; Hong, Chiu, & Huang, 2012; Lee,
Chang, Lin, & Chen, 2014; Lepp, Barkley, & Karpinski, 2014). Many
students have reported feeling anxious when they are unable to
access their cellphones. Interestingly, this anxiety tends to occur
within a 10-min time period (Cheever et al., 2014)dabout the same
time that attention begins to wane. One proposed explanation for
this anxiety is that students who rely on their cellphone (or other
mobile device) experience a “fear of missing out (FOMO)”
(Pryzbylski, Murayama, DeHaan, & Gladwell, 2013).
Generally, a fear and discomfort from not having access to one's
mobile device is a phenomenon that has become more recognized
in the literature of cellphone dependency and is referred to as
nomophobia (King et al., 2014; Yildirim & Correia, 2015). Although
this phenomenon is not included in the DSM-V, researchers suggest
that it should be included as a psychological disorder as it appears
to meet clinical characteristics that have been described in other
disorders such as anxiety, addiction, and obsessive compulsiveness
(Bragazzi & Del Puente, 2014; Lee at al., 2017). As of now, nom-
ophobia is not considered a psychological disorder.
The Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q) was developed to
assess the impact of nomophobia and to gather information on its
usefulness to be considered a psychological disorder (Yildirim &
Correia, 2015). Through factor analysis, Yildirim and Correia
(2015) demonstrated that nomophobia was comprised of four
related domains of anxiety: 1) not being able to communicate, 2)
losing connectedness, 3) not being able to access information, and
4) giving up convenience. The authors provided evidence that the
54 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
NMP-Q scale as a whole had high internal consistency (Cronbach
alpha ¼ .95) and that each of the four subscales also had a high
internal consistency (Cronbach alpha's ranging from 0.81 to 0.94).
However, it is unknown whether nomophobia overall (using the
total scale) or the types of anxiety characterized by the subscales
best captures the relationship between nomophobia and potential
disruptions in attention in the classroom.
4. Cellphones' impact on learning in the classroom
As outlined above, learning can be impaired when attention is
divided between lecture materials and distracting activities (e.g.,
Baddeley, Lewis, Eldridge, & Thomson, 1984; Craik, Govoni, Naveh-
Benjamin, & Anderson, 1996; Dudukovic et al., 2009; Fernandes &
Moscovitch, 2000). Froese et al. (2012) examined the effect of
receiving text messages in lecture settings on the retention of
content material. In this study, some participants put their phone
on silent and stored it out of sight and other participants received
texts from researchers during the lecture. Students in the texting
condition were asked to set their phones on vibrate and were
permitted to respond to texts immediately to any text message that
they received. After the lecture, participants completed a quiz for
the lecture material. Those who were in the condition that received
text messages had lower quiz scores than those who were asked to
put their phones away (see also, Lee et al., 2017).
In contrast to the research supporting the detrimental effects
and relationship between learning and cellphone use, many college
students feel that cellphones enhance their learning environment
(Eyyam & Yaratan, 2014; Jan, Ullah, Ali, & Khan, 2016). Research has
indicated that, to some extent, cellphones can be positive pre-
dictors for self-directed learning (Rashid & Asghar, 2016). Cell-
phones can benefit students because of their ease of accessibility
and their ability to be used as teaching instruments. Thornton and
Houser (2005) showed that cellphones can be effective and
convenient tools for distributing foreign language material to stu-
dents and demonstrated that students can learn the material using
their cellphone. Similar findings suggest that cellphones may be
optimal in learning basic concepts for those who have low verbal
and visual abilities (Chen, Hsieh, & Kinshuk, 2008). These studies
differ from the viewpoint discussed earlier that cellphones are al-
ways detrimental to learning and allow for a more balanced
perspective on their impact on attention and learning. However,
the mixed findings also raise an important question: When do
cellphones negatively impact attention and learning?
This study brings forth the relationship between attentional
decline as it relates to cellphone dependency. It also aims to un-
derstand when individuals are most likely to be distracted by their
cellphones. It has been established in prior research that over time,
students begin to feel worried and show behaviors related to
anxiety when they are not allowed to check their cellphone
(Cheever et al., 2014). It is also recognized that a cellphone ring or
notification, regardless of whose phone it is, can serve as a dis-
tractor in classroom settings (End et al., 2010; Shelton et al., 2009).
However, the point during a lecture when individuals are likely to
experience attentional decline has been scarcely studied.
5. Experiment 1
In Experiment 1, we conducted a secondary analysis on a data
set that investigated the impact of cellphone policies on learning in
a simulated classroom environment (Lee et al., 2017). In the original
study, 160 college students were randomly assigned to one of four
group conditions that varied how cellphones could be used: Group
1 (cellphone use and possession permitted), Group 2 (cellphone use
not permitteddput it in silent mode with possession), Group 3
(complete removal of cellphone from participants’ possession), and
a Control Group (no instruction on cellphone use). All students
were presented with a 20-min videotaped lecture, took a short quiz
on that lecture material, and completed a questionnaire that
assessed nomophobia. Unbeknownst to the students, the experi-
menters texted them four predetermined times throughout the
lecture to simulate cellphone distraction (with the exception of
Group 3 who had their phones taken away from them). Researchers
only manipulated the restriction of phone use for the assigned
condition and did not instruct participants on how to interact with
the text messages being received. The study showed that students
who had their cellphones taken away performed best on the quiz
compared to the other three groups, which did not differ from each
other. Surprisingly, total score on the assessment of nomophobia
(the NMP-Q) was not associated with total quiz performance.
We reasoned that the relationship between having a cellphone,
personality factors like nomophobia, and quiz performance was
likely more nuanced than previously realized. Based on our review
of prior research, we hypothesized that the detrimental effects of
having a cellphone in a classroom setting would vary depending on
how attention fluctuates over time. Attention is expected to be at its
highest early on in the lecture, thus leading to the best quiz per-
formance for lecture materials occurring during the first quarter
across both groups. This idea is consistent with the well-
established primacy effects of learning. However, as attention de-
creases during the later parts of the lecture, we predicted that
having a cellphone would begin to have a more negative impact on
quiz performance. Because of the supporting evidence on sustained
attention decreasing at about 10e15 min into lectures and
cellphone-induced anxiety increasing after about 10 min (Cheever
et al., 2014), we also predicted that the cellphone group would
perform more poorly on the quiz than the non-cellphone group for
questions that fell in later quarters of the lecture (i.e., 10e20 min
into the lecture).
Similarly, we tested whether cellphone-induced anxiety
contributed to detriments in attention and subsequent quiz per-
formance. We hypothesized that higher levels of nomophobia
would be associated with worse quiz performance, and that this
relationship would be strongest in the later quarters of the lecture.
Because the notion of nomophobia has been demonstrated to have
a complex factor structure, we further tested the extent that the
four factors making up nomophobia would differentially impact
quiz performance. To test these ideas, we collapsed the groups of
participants that retained their cellphone (Group 1, Group 2, and
the Control Group) to compare the findings with the group that did
not retain their cellphone (Group 3). We then divided the quiz
questions by the quarter in the lecture to which they corresponded.
6. Method
6.1. Participants
Participants (N ¼ 160) were recruited from undergraduate psy-
chology courses at a small, liberal arts college in Southeastern
Arkansas. Participants received partial course credit for their
completion of the study. All participants were randomly assigned to
one of the four group conditions and each group consisted of 40
participants: Group 1 (cellphone use and possession permitted),
Group 2 (cellphone use not permitteddput it in silent mode with
possession), Group 3 (complete removal of cellphone from partic-
ipants’ possession), and a Control Group (no instruction on cell-
phone use). Groups that retained their cellphone were collapsed
together (n ¼ 140). All sessions were conducted in a classroom,
with the number of participants per session ranging from 5 to 14.
 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
6.2. Measures
Participants were presented with a 20-min TED talk given by Dr.
Sam Richards, called “A Radical Experiment in Empathy.” This lec-
ture was selected because the content was comparable to that of
the content in a lecture. The content was neither too difficult nor
too easy for students. Also, the duration of the video was selected
due to previous research that has found evidence on the length of
attention span in a given time during a lecture (Benjamin, 2002;
McKeachie & Svinicki, 2006). After the lecture, participants took a
quiz that consisted of 20 multiple-choice questions pertaining to
topics distributed throughout the lecture. Participants were asked
to choose one correct answer. The questions were then divided into
which quarter (every 5 min) of the lecture they fell (1st quarter: six
questions, 2nd quarter: five questions, 3rd quarter: four questions,
4th quarter: five questions). Two questions from the 4th quarter of
the lecture were removed from the analyses because performance
was significantly below chance (M ¼ 0.03, SD ¼ 0.17, t(159) ¼ 15.83,
p < .001 and M ¼ 0.19, SD ¼ 0.39, t(159) ¼ 2.02, p ¼ .045). Further
inspection of these questions suggested that they were misleading
and/or poorly written. Questions from each quarter were then
averaged together to provide a measure of quiz performance for
each quarter.
Following the quiz, participants completed a self-report mea-
sure to assess their fear or discomfort of not having their mobile
device accessible to them using the NMP-Q (Yildirim & Correia,
2015). The NMP-Q consists of 20 items that covers four di-
mensions of nomophobia: not being able to communicate, losing
connectedness, not being able to access information, and giving up
convenience. Each item is measured by a 7-point Likert scale, with 1
being “Strongly Disagree” and with 7 being “Strongly Agree” and
has a Cronbach's alpha of .95 (e.g., Bragazzi et al., 2016; Yildirim &
Correia, 2015). The Cronbach alpha of the NMP-Q total score in the
current study was 0.94 and for the four subscales was 0.92, 0.87,
0.85, and 0.83, respectively.
6.3. Procedure
After participants read and signed a consent form, the experi-
menter informed them that they would watch a 20-min video-
recorded lecture. Students were divided into two groups: allowed
to keep their cellphone or their cellphone was not allowed in the
study. During the lecture, all participants except for those who had
their cellphone taken away received four text messages sent by a
student research assistant at four predetermined times (3, 7, 11, and
15 min after the lecture started). The text messages were: “Hey!”,
“Are you there?”, “We are waiting at the McDonalds. Are you
coming?”, and “Sorry! I got the wrong number”. After a 1-min
break, all participants took the 20-item quiz about the lecture
and were asked to fill out the NMP-Q. Students were not given any
instruction on how to interact with the texts messages they
received. Instead, researchers took note of this behavior as it
occurred naturally.
6.4. Analysis strategy
Analyses were conducted with SPSS 23 (IBM Corp., 2016). To
investigate the effects of Cellphone Group on quiz performance for
each of the four quarters, we report a 2 (Group: Retain Cellphone,
Remove Cellphone) x 4 (Quarter: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) mixed analysis
of variance (ANOVA) on quiz performance. This analysis allows us
to test the extent that having a cellphone has a different impact on
quiz performance depending on the quarter that the lecture con-
tent was presented. To investigate the effects of nomophobia on
quiz performance for each of the four quarters, we first report zero-
55
order Pearson correlations between quiz performance at each
quarter and NMP-Q total and NMP-Q subscale scores. We then
report separate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) with four levels of
Quarter as a repeated-measures factor and NMP-Q as a continuous
covariate. This analysis allows us to test the extent that nom-
ophobia has a different impact on quiz performance depending on
the quarter that the lecture content was presented. Lastly, we
assessed whether the effects of having a cellphone and having
nomophobia exerted independent and additive effects on quiz
performance or whether the same mechanism explained the poor
quiz performance. Towards this aim, we conducted multiple
regression analyses with Cellphone Group and Nomophobia as
independent variables to predict quiz performance for material
presented in the third quarter of the lecture.
7. Results
7.1. Quiz performance as a function of cellphone group
A 2 (Group: Retain Cellphone, Remove Cellphone) x 4 (Quarter:
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) mixed ANOVA resulted in a main effect of
Quarter, F(3,474) ¼ 21.22, MSE ¼ 0.052, p < .001, h2p ¼ 0.12, consis-
tent with the difficulty to sustain attention over time, albeit non-
linearly (see Table 1). Quiz performance dropped from questions
in the first quarter to the second quarter (t(159) ¼ 3.02,
SEM ¼ 0.024, p ¼ .003, d ¼ 0.30), slightly increased from the second
quarter to third quarter (t(159) ¼ 2.24, SEM ¼ 0.023, p ¼ .026,
d ¼ 0.20), and decreased from third quarter to the fourth quarter
(t(159) ¼ 6.73, SEM ¼ 0.028, p < .001, d ¼ 0.67). A main effect of
Group was found, F(1,158) ¼ 7.51, MSE ¼ 0.029, p ¼ .007, h2p ¼ 0.05,
indicating that quiz performance was better for the group whose
cellphones were removed (M ¼ 0.65, SD ¼ 0.17) compared with the
group whose cellphones were retained (M ¼ 0.57, SD ¼ 0.16).
Although the interaction was not significant, F(3,474) ¼ 7.51,
MSE ¼ 0.052, p ¼ .54, h2p ¼ 0.003, the effect size was the largest for
the content that occurred in the third quarter of the lecture,
consistent with our hypotheses (see Table 1).
7.2. Quiz performance as a function of nomophobia
Zero-order correlations for quiz performance at each quarter
and NMP-Q total and NMP-Q subscale scores can be found in
Table 2. For the total NMP-Q score and two of the four NMP-Q
subscales (Subscale 2: Losing Connectedness and Subscale 4: Giv-
ing Up Convenience), greater nomophobia was significantly asso-
ciated with worse quiz performance in the third quarter of content
presentation. No other correlations between NMP-Q and quiz per-
formance were significant.
We next conducted separate ANCOVAs to test the extent that the
associations were selectively stronger for third quarter quiz per-
formance compared with quiz performance from the other quarters
of lecture content. As the factor of Quarter was presented in the
previous analyses, we will report only on the main effects of
nomophobia and potential interactions. For the NMP-Q total score
and NMPQ Subscales 1e3, we found neither a main effect of NMP-Q
nor a Quarter x NMP-Q interaction (all ps > .099). For the NMPQ
Subscale 4 (Giving Up Convenience), we found a main effect of
NMP-Q4, F(1,158) ¼ 5.57, MSE ¼ 0.12, p ¼ .019, h2p ¼ 0.034, but no
interaction (p ¼ .64).
A different and simpler method to compare selectivity is to
directly compare the strength of the correlations in the third
quarter (when attention was predicted to wane) with that of the
first quarter (when attention was predicted to be at its peak) (Eid &
Lischetzke, 2013). Using this technique, the correlation strength
between nomophobia and quiz performance for the third and first
56 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60

Table 1
Quiz performance as a function of quarter and cellphone group.

Quarter Group

Retain Cellphone Remove Cellphone Group Difference Total

M (SD) M (SD) Cohen's d M (SD)

First 0.65 (0.21) 0.71 (0.17) 0.35 0.66 (0.20)

Second 0.58 (0.27) 0.64 (0.29) 0.21 0.59 (0.27)
Third 0.61 (0.25) 0.74 (0.21) 0.55 0.64 (0.25)
Fourth 0.43 (0.32) 0.52 (0.31) 0.27 0.45 (0.32)

Table 2
Zero-order correlations with Test Performance and Nomophobia in Experiment 1.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. First Quarter e 0.22** 0.32** 0.10 0.06 0.01 0.08 0.10 0.01
2. Second Quarter e 0.39** 0.28** 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.13 0.04
3. Third Quarter e 0.21** 0.09 0.19* 0.15 0.20* 0.19*
4. Fourth Quarter e 0.02 0.05 0.12 0.08 0.07
5. NMP-Q1 e 0.57** 0.56** 0.60** 0.78**
6. NMP-Q2 e 0.72** 0.70** 0.89**
7. NMP-Q3 e 0.58** 0.87**
8. NMP-Q4 e 0.83**
9. NMP-Q Total Score e
* **
p < .05; p < .01.

quarter of lecture materials differed for the NMP-Q total score the NMP-Q4 (Model 2), we found that both Cellphone Group
(Z ¼ 1.95, p ¼ .026), NMPQ-2 (Z ¼ 2.17, p ¼ .015), and NMPQ-3 (ß ¼ 0.19, p ¼ .019) and NMP-Q4 (ß ¼ 0.16, p ¼ .049) exerted in-
(Z ¼ 2.48, p ¼ .006). The two correlation strengths did not differ dependent effects on quiz performance.
for NMP-Q1 (Z ¼ 0.32, p ¼ .37) or NMP-Q4 (Z ¼ 1.09, p ¼ .14).

7.3. Additive effects of cellphone use and nomophobia 8. Experiment 2

Lastly, we conducted two multiple regression analyses with
Cellphone Group and Nomophobia as independent variables to
predict quiz performance for material presented in the third
quarter of the lecture. We only investigated quiz performance in
the third quarter of the lecture because the strongest effects be-
tween nomophobia and quiz performance occurred in the third
quarter of the lecture. Because we found significant relationships
between quiz performance and two subscales of nomophobia
(Subscale 2 and Subscale 4), the first multiple regression model
used NMP-Q2 to represent Nomophobia and the second model
used NMP-Q4 to represent Nomophobia. Because of the high cor-
relation between the two subscale scores (r ¼ 0.70), it would not be
appropriate to include both in a single model. The results of the two
multiple regressions can be found in Table 3. When using the NMP-
Q2 (Model 1), we found that Cellphone Group (ß ¼ 0.19, p ¼ .015)
exerted independent effects on third-quarter quiz performance, but
NMP-Q2 (ß ¼ 0.15, p ¼ .060) only trended to do so. When using
Table 3
Multiple regression for quiz performance for content presented in the third quarter
of lecture.
Factor Experiment 1
In Experiment 2, new data were collected from a different uni-
versity and a larger sample size to replicate the findings from
Experiment 1 and to examine the extent that quiz performance
would be most negatively impaired by students who were notice-
ably distracted by the text messages. As in Experiment 1, the par-
ticipants received text messages from the experimenters who were
in the classroom setting, but out of sight from participants’ view.
However, in this experiment, we recorded which students looked at
their cellphones (and thus were noticeably distracted) versus stu-
dents who successfully maintained focus on the lecture. As in
Experiment 1, we did not give students any instruction on whether
to interact with the text messages that they received in the
experimental condition. Instead, we observed the interaction with
their phones as they occurred naturally in the given condition. We
predicted that we would replicate the findings from Experiment 1
and that students who were noticeably distracted by the text
messages would show the poorest quiz performance, especially for
questions corresponding to the later parts of the lecture.
9. Method
Experiment 2

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

9.1. Participants

ß ß ß ß
Participants (N ¼ 211) were recruited from undergraduate psy-
Cellphone Group 0.19* 0.19* 0.02 0.03 chology courses at a large, research university in West Alabama.
Distraction Group 0.23** 0.21**
e e
Participants received partial course credit for their completion of
NMPQ-2 0.15 e 0.22** e
NMPQ-4 e 0.16* e 0.10 the study and were randomly assigned to the four group conditions
R2 0.071 0.073 0.093 0.056 as in Experiment 1. All groups where participants retained their
F 6.02** 6.19** 7.08*** 4.06** cellphone were collapsed together (n ¼ 152). Sessions were con-
F (dfs) (2,157) (2,157) (3,206) (3,206) ducted in a classroom, with the number of participants per session
* ** ***
p < .05, p < .01, p < .001. ranging from 3 to 15.
 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
Table 4
Quiz performance as a function of quarter, cellphone group, and distraction group.
Quarter Group
Retain Cellphone Remove Cellphone Group Difference
M (SD) M (SD) Cohen's d
First 0.75 (0.19) 0.71 (0.19) 0.21
Second 0.68 (0.26) 0.66 (0.28) 0.08
Third 0.71 (0.20) 0.71 (0.24) 0.00
Fourth 0.61 (0.30) 0.59 (0.30) 0.04
9.2. Measures and procedure
The measures and procedure were identical to Experiment 1
(including the two quiz questions that were dropped) with the
exception that the Experimenter assessed the degree of cellphone
distraction. Specifically, for each participant, the Experimenter
marked each time a student looked at their cellphone (n ¼ 35,
M ¼ 4.00 times, SD ¼ 2.77), picked up and checked their cellphone
(n ¼ 20, M ¼ 2.85 times, SD ¼ 2.28), or texted from their cellphone
(n ¼ 16, M ¼ 3.38 times, SD ¼ 3.93). Note that a single participant
might have engaged in multiple behaviors. These behaviors were
recorded regardless of whether we sent the text messages or
whether they happened to receive a text message from another
source during the study. To simplify the data, participants were
then sorted into a “distracted” group (n ¼ 39) if they had at least
one instance of any of the above behaviors, or were otherwise
sorted into a “non-distracted” group (n ¼ 171).1 One person was
removed from analyses pertaining to Distraction Group because
they had missing data for this measure. The Cronbach alpha scores
suggest high reliability for total NMP-Q (.95) and Subscales 1e4
(0.93, 0.86, 0.83, 0.81, respectively)
10. Results
10.1. Quiz performance as a function of cellphone group
A 2 (Group: Retain Cellphone, Remove Cellphone) x 4 (Quarter:
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) mixed ANOVA was calculated on quiz perfor-
mance (see Table 4). This ANOVA resulted in a main effect of
Quarter, F(3,627) ¼ 13.16, MSE ¼ 0.043, p < .001, h2p ¼ 0.06, consis-
tent with Experiment 1. Quiz performance dropped from questions
in the first quarter to the second quarter (t(210) ¼ 3.49,
SEM ¼ 0.018, p ¼ .001, d ¼ 0.27), non-significantly increased from
the second quarter to third quarter (t(210) ¼ 1.96, SEM ¼ 0.019,
p ¼ .051, d ¼ 0.15), and decreased from third quarter to the fourth
quarter (t(210) ¼ 4.98, SEM ¼ 0.022, p < .001, d ¼ 0.42). Neither the
main effect of Group nor the Group  Quarter interaction were
significant (both ps > .47). In contrast to Experiment 1, having a
cellphone did not impact quiz performance across any of the
quarters of the lecture.
10.2. Quiz performance as a function of nomophobia
We first report zero-order Pearson correlations for quiz
1
An alternative method to analyze the data would be to sum the distraction
ratings to assess a degree of distraction (Range 0 to 22 overt signs of distraction).
However, given that the majority of participants did not visibly take notice of the
text messages, this would cause an extremely uneven distribution in the measure.
Moreover, we did not have power to conduct correlations within the sample of
distracted participants only to investigate the effects of varying degrees of
distraction. Lastly, given that we did not have multiple observers noting the degree
of distractedness, we minimize error in the measure by simply categorizing par-
ticipants as “distracted” or “not distracted.”
57
Group
Distracted Not Distracted Group Difference Total
M (SD) M (SD) Cohen's d M (SD)
0.67 (0.17) 0.75 (0.19) 0.45 0.74 (0.19)
0.60 (0.27) 0.69 (0.26) 0.35 0.67 (0.26)
0.62 (0.26) 0.73 (0.20) 0.52 0.71 (0.22)
0.56 (0.28) 0.61 (0.30) 0.16 0.60 (0.30)
performance at each quarter and NMP-Q total and NMP-Q subscale
scores. As can be seen in Table 5. In this larger sample, we found the
total NMP-Q score and NMP-Q Subscale 2 (Losing Connectedness)
were negatively correlated with quiz performance in the third
quarter of content presentation, replicating Experiment 1. In
addition, we extended the findings in Experiment 1 such that the
NMP-Q Subscale 1 (Not Being Able to Communicate) was negatively
correlated with third quarter quiz performance and that NMP-Q
Subscale 2 (Losing Connectedness) was negatively correlated with
second quarter quiz performance.
As in Experiment 1, we further tested the extent that the asso-
ciations were selectively stronger for third quarter quiz perfor-
mance compared with quiz performance from the other quarters of
lecture content by calculating five separate ANCOVAs using Quarter
as a repeated-measures factors and the NMP-Q total score and each
NMP-Q subscale as a covariate. We focus these analyses on repli-
cating the previous effects and so did not test the unexpected
correlation with quiz performance from the second quarter mate-
rial. Furthermore, we will report only on the main effects of nom-
ophobia and potential interactions. For the NMP-Q total score and
NMP-Q Subscale 1, 3, and 4, we found neither a main effect of
NMP-Q nor a Quarter x NMP-Q interaction (all ps > .12). For the
NMP-Q Subscale 2 (Losing Connectedness), we found a main effect
of NMP-Q2, F(1,209) ¼ 8.69, MSE ¼ 0.11, p ¼ .004, h2p ¼ 0.04, but no
interaction (p ¼ .40). Using this method, we failed to find evidence
for a significantly stronger effect of NMP-Q in the total score or
across any of the subscales, despite the fact that the effect size
between NMP-Q and quiz performance was consistently strongest
for content presented in the third quarter of the lecture. When
comparing the strength of the correlations in the third quarter with
that of the first quarter directly (using the method recommended
by Eid & Lischetzke, 2013), we also found no differences for any of
the nomophobia measures (all ps > .09).
10.3. Quiz performance as a function of distraction
A 2 (Group: Distracted, Not Distracted) x 4 (Quarter: 1st, 2nd,
3rd, 4th) mixed ANOVA was calculated on quiz performance (see
Table 4). Because the effect of Quarter was reported in the first
analysis, we only report the effects with Group. This ANOVA
resulted in a main effect of Group, F(1,208) ¼ 8.47, MSE ¼ 0.11,
p ¼ .004, h2p ¼ 0.039, such that distracted participants performed
poorer (M ¼ 0.61, SD ¼ 0.16) than non-distracted participants
(M ¼ 0.70, SD ¼ 0.17). The Group  Quarter interaction was not
significant (p ¼ .58). As with many of the previous measures, while
we found no significant interaction, the effect size for distraction
was greatest for content in the third quarter of the lecture (see
Table 4).
10.4. Additive effects of cellphone use, nomophobia, and distraction
Similar to Experiment 1, we tested whether the effects of having
a cellphone and having nomophobia exerted independent effects
58 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
Table 5
Zero-order correlations with Test Performance and Nomophobia in Experiment 2.
1 2 3 4
1. First Quarter e 0.37** 0.27** 0.24**
2. Second Quarter e 0.38** 0.28**
3. Third Quarter e 0.25**
4. Fourth Quarter e 0.04
5. NMP-Q1
6. NMP-Q2
7. NMP-Q3
8. NMP-Q4
9. NMP-Q Total Score
* **
p < .05; p < .01.
on quiz performance for quiz questions occurring in the third
quarter of the lecture. In addition to these two factors, we also
included the additional factor of Distraction Group. Two multiple
regression models (Model 3 and 4) were employed with Cellphone
Group, Nomophobia, and Distraction Group as independent vari-
ables to predict quiz performance for material presented in the
third quarter of the lecture (see Table 3). The first regression
analysis used NMP-Q2 to represent Nomophobia and the second
regression analysis used NMP-Q4 to represent Nomophobia. In the
first analysis, we found that NMP-Q2 (ß ¼ 0.22, p ¼ .001) and
Distraction Group (ß ¼ -0.23, p ¼ .001) exerted independent effects
on quiz performance. The Cellphone Group was not significant
(ß ¼ -0.02, p ¼ .73). In the second analysis, only Cellphone Group
was significant (ß ¼ -0.21, p ¼ .002).
11. Discussion
The goal of this study was to examine how the presence of
having a cellphone, the distractibility of text messages, and indi-
vidual differences in nomophobia might impact learning at
different times during a short lecture. We approached this goal by
examining quiz performance throughout four quarters of a 20-min
video recorded lecture while text messages were sent to the par-
ticipants during lecture. We found that quiz performance was
critically impacted by possession of one's cellphone, one's nom-
ophobia score, and one's objective distractibility. Notably, the ma-
jority of these effects were largest for content presented in the third
quarter of the lecture. This time period is critical because it is at this
time that attention begins to wane and task-unrelated thoughts
increase. Furthermore, many of these effects were additive, sug-
gesting they combine to impair attention and subsequent learning
of lecture materials. Results from Experiment 2 also suggest that
many of the effects generalize to a new university and a larger
group of participants. Overall, these findings are consistent with
research that has observed a decline in attention after a 10e15-min
time period (Benjamin, 2002; McKeachie & Svinicki, 2006; Wilson
& Korn, 2007) that, in turn, results in negative consequences for the
retrieval of learned information (e.g., deBettencourt et al., 2017).
These findings also suggest that these factors share the same types
of cognitive resources, creating multitasking interference effects
(Salvucci & Taatgen, 2008, 2011).
We found that nomophobia was associated with numerically
poorer performance across all four time points using the total NMP-
Q score. However, the third quarter showed a statistically signifi-
cant relationship between nomophobia and quiz performance.
Students at that time point may have been approaching a low point
in their attention span and may have lost their interest in the lec-
ture, which led to the possibility of having wandering thoughts.
According to Smallwood, Nind, and O'Conner (2009), mind wan-
dering is likely to occur when a task does not require undivided
attention. Since students were not asked to take notes during the
5 6 7 8 9
0.07 0.13 0.02 0.04 0.08
0.00 0.18* 0.03 0.00 0.04
0.18* 0.21** 0.05 0.11 0.17*
0.06 0.09 0.07 0.03
e 0.63** 0.65** 0.75** 0.91**
e 0.58** 0.65** 0.82**
e 0.68** 0.81**
e 0.90**
e
lecture and only pay attention, viewing the lecture alone may not
have been a sufficient task to keep their attention. Another expla-
nation is that students may have begun to divert their attention to
the possibility of unread messages on their phones during the third
quarter of the lecture. Consistent with this idea, students often
report a sensational “fear of missing out” when they are away from
their cellphones (Przbylski et al., 2013). It should be recognized that
the association between nomophobia and quiz performance was
relatively weak, and the association was often not significantly
different from quiz performance for lecture material in other
quarters. Perhaps this effect might be present at many times
throughout the lecture and not just 10e15 min into a lecture (but
for conflicting results, see Lee et al., 2017).
We also explored whether different facets of nomophobia best
explained the declines in quiz performance. In Experiment 1, we
found that the fourth subscale of the NMP-Q, representing the
anxiety that stems from giving up convenience of one's cellphone,
showed the strongest effects with third quarter quiz performance.
The second subscale of the NMP-Q, representing anxiety that stems
from losing connectedness, also showed significant effects with
quiz performance although the multiple regression analysis
revealed that these effects were not completely independent from
the effect of being without one's cellphone (as measured by taking
away some participant's cellphone). In Experiment 2, while we
replicated the basic correlations with the NMP-Q total score and
quiz performance for content in the third quarter of the lecture, we
found more reliable correlations with the second subscale (losing
connectedness) than the fourth subscale (giving up convenience).
The reason for the inconsistency with quiz performance and the
fourth subscale of the NMP-Q is not yet clear and might be
addressed in future research.
We found that the effects of having a cellphone, being distracted
by a cellphone, and nomophobia consistently impacted quiz per-
formance for material presented in the third quarter of lecture, but
not for the last quarter of lecture. This lack of difference in quiz
performance might be explained by negative recency (Craik,
Gardiner, & Watkins, 1970). According to this idea, a delay of as
little as 18 s between when the last information was presented and
when a memory test is given, will lead to a loss of that information
in short-term memory. Another possibility is that there might have
been specific content that was presented during the third quarter of
the lecture that impacted performance. This content effect could
have occurred because we did not manipulate or rotate when the
content was presented. However, it is unclear why three different
measures (cellphone policy, distraction, and nomophobia) would
all impact only a specific type of content. Future research might
investigate the extent to which these factors might be most detri-
mental to content type (e.g., abstract vs. concrete ideas).
This study is guided by prior knowledge of how cellphones
impact student learning. Some research suggests that cellphones
can bring a positive experience when learning material (e.g., Jan
 J.S. Mendoza et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 86 (2018) 52e60
et al., 2016; Rashid & Asghar, 2016). However, other research argues
that cellphones are intrusive and disruptive to learning (e.g., Dietz
& Henrich, 2014; Froese et al., 2012; Thornton et al., 2014). This
study helps to reconcile these findings in part, by showing that
cellphones do not equivocally lead to poor performance. However,
we also find no evidence of a benefit for cellphones in a simulated
classroom setting.
The importance of knowing when attention is most likely to
decrease is important for educators so that they can prepare their
lectures accordingly. The findings of this study support the notion
that attention begins to decline after about 10e15 min. Educators
might consider including short breaks every 15 min or assign a brief
activity to maintain freshness in the lecture. Research suggests that
students who feel cognitively fatigued benefit from breaks to
restore their attention (Felsten, 2009). However, educators may
want to be cautious when assigning these short breaks and keep in
mind that if students choose to use their cellphones during the
break, a slight delay in adjusting back to the lecture may result from
looking at their phone (Thapa et al., 2015). Rather than having
students use their devices during short breaks, research suggests
that allowing students to view some form of nature (through
painting or in person) may have a positive influence on restoring
attention (Felsten, 2009). Another suggestion is for educators to
implement a no cellphone policy despite the fact that some stu-
dents may experience nomophobia (e.g., Lee et al., 2017). It is
important to inform students of how learning suffers from using a
cellphone in class and draw awareness as to how one person's
cellphone use may have a negative effect other students' concen-
tration as well.
11.1. Limitations
One limitation in the present study is that we are inferring that
the memory effects are due to different levels of attention paid
during the lecture. While our rationale is theoretically guided and
based on decades of research, attention was not directly measured
in the present study. In addition, even though no text messages
were given while students were taking the quiz, it could be the case
that having a cellphone distracted participants during the quiz.
Participants might have been thinking about the previous text
messages while taking the quiz or perhaps were anxious to look at
their phones after being in the study for about an hour. Relatedly,
participants may have developed anxiety about the unknown
number that was texting them, rather than because they were
receiving text messages. Future studies allowing participants to
check their phone between lecture and quiz or using known
numbers (e.g., a campus alert system) or using notifications from
social media (e.g., “Someone tagged you on a Facebook post”)
would strengthen the current results.
Another limitation is that the experiment was limited to 20 min
when many classroom lectures are at least 50 min. Although
research has demonstrated that attention is most vulnerable at a
time when individuals are engaged in complex tasks (Thornton
et al., 2014), this study supports evidence that attention suffers
even when the task at hand is as simple as listening to a 20-min
lecture. One other limitation may be that students only experience
declines in attention when not highly motivated to attend to the
lecture. Because the present study was in the context of an exper-
iment rather than an actual classroom, students may not have been
motivated to sustain their attention throughout the entire lecture.
Future research manipulating motivation or incentives can shed
light on this issue.
59
12. Conclusion
The present study adds to previous research by showing new
ways in which cellphones serve as distractions in classroom setting
and impair learning (Dietz & Henrich, 2014; Thapa et al., 2015;
Wood et al., 2012). Specifically, this study strengthens the under-
standing of the time when attention is most likely to decrease
during learning and the role that distraction from cellphones play
in this decreased attention. In addition, this study uniquely ad-
dresses when nomophobia is likely to contribute to student's quiz
performance. The findings are in line with research that has found
supporting evidence on how using technology while attending to a
lecture hold a negative impact on learning. The study also is in line
with bottle neck theories of attention, which suggest that there is a
slowing down of performance of the secondary task at hand (e.g.,
Welford, 1967). In this scenario, students are likely to attend to
cellphones first when they are being distracted by a lecture and
then listening to the material becomes a secondary task. By
observing patterns of when attention begins to decrease, educators
and students can plan ahead and use appropriate methods to
prevent distractions in classrooms as well as implement break in-
tervals to restore attention.
Declarations of interest
Conflicts of interest: none
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration
of Helsinki, all participants were consented before participating,
and was approved by the IRB boards of University of Arkansas at
Monticello and The University of Alabama.
Role of the funding source
None.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.04.027.
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