Open AccessEffect of the Presence of a Mobile Phone during a Spatial Visual Search
Author(s) -
Ito Motohiro,
Kawahara JunIchiro
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
japanese psychological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.392
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5884
pISSN - 0021-5368
DOI - 10.1111/jpr.12143
Subject(s) - mobile phone , psychology , contrast (vision) , phone , set (abstract data type) , neuropsychology , test (biology) , task (project management) , visual attention , cognitive psychology , social psychology , audiology , computer science , cognition , medicine , neuroscience , computer vision , telecommunications , paleontology , philosophy , linguistics , management , economics , biology , programming language
Recent studies suggest that the “mere presence” of a mobile phone impairs social interactions and neuropsychological test performance. The present study examined whether the presence of a mobile phone causes spatial bias toward the device during a visual search task. Participants identified a target among spatially distributed non‐targets. We manipulated three factors: device presence (mobile phone or notepad), target congruency (congruent or incongruent), and attentional load (set size 8 or 24). A mobile phone (or a notepad in the control condition) was placed on the left side of the computer screen. Participants also completed a questionnaire to measure I nternet usage and attachment. Participants with high scores on the questionnaire rapidly identified the target at the congruent (same side as the phone) location, but the mere presence effect did not occur in this condition. In contrast, participants with low scores on the questionnaire demonstrated the mere presence effect, but no spatial bias was observed. These results suggest that the mere presence effect can be modulated by individual differences in the degree to which a device is appealing.