Friday, May 29, 2009

Cell phone distractions impair recall

Cell phone ringtones can pose major distraction, impair recall
The study includes an experiment in which Shelton poses as a student seated in the middle of a crowded undergraduate psychology lecture and allows a cell phone in her handbag to continue ringing loudly for about 30 seconds.
Students exposed to a briefly ringing cell phone scored 25 percent worse on a test of material presented before the distraction.

Students tested later scored about 25 percent worse for recall of course content presented during the distraction, even though the same information was covered by the professor just prior to the phone ring and projected as text in a slide show shown throughout the distraction. Students scored even worse when Shelton added to the disturbance by frantically searching her handbag as if attempting to find and silence her ringing phone.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers

Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers - NYTimes.com

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Monday, May 18, 2009

Vodafone | Receiver | Mobile creation – the Japanese way

Mobile creation – the Japanese way
Both psychologically and physically, young Japanese are never too far from their handsets and the connections to the world that come with the devices. For them, a mobile device is a constant companion, time-killer, game machine, television, organizer, wallet, music player and communicator. In short, it's not terribly necessary to own a PC to be connected digitally, so when the creative urge strikes, the mobile generation uses the tool most comfortable to them: their handsets.