TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) -- Most of us can admit that getting a call or text message can make our mind wander, but some scientists decided to test just how much distraction we're talking about.
Courtney Yehnert, who works and graduated from Florida State University, co-authored 'The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification."
It's the result of a blind experiment to see how much a smartphone can hurt task performance.
The researchers gave the group a simple task, then would call or text their phone to measure how their performance went down. They found "notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not directly interact with a mobile device during the task."
Yehnert joined us on WTXL Sunrise for more information about the study. Click the thumbnail for the interview.
