43% of people in the world owned a smartphone in 2016 (Han & Yi, 2018; Kim & Koh, 2018). We view smartphones as an extension of ourselves and have since become addicted. 50% of users check their phones within minutes of waking up and it is the last thing they check before going to bed. Of those most affected are females, who tend to spend an average of 5.2 hours on their smartphones vs. 3.9 hours for males (Nayak, 2018). Students bring their phones to class and do not realize how distracting they are. When asked on average how many times they access their phones, students reported only 3 times per class, but in reality it was over 20 times (Felisoni & Godoi, 2018). This has serious implications on their academic performance. Our hypothesis: The closer and more visible the phone is to an individual, the more it will negatively impact their ability to focus their attention on a task-relevant activity. Conclusions: Females reportedly use their phones more than males, however our results indicate this causes no negative impact on their attention when compared to males. Students significantly underestimate how often they check their phones, so it is highly likely that their self-reported phone usage number was inaccurate. This could explain the weak correlations we found between phone access and scores. Class A performed better than Class B when their phones were not present, implying two things: Class A included more students who are more reliant on their phones. The type of class structure or the type of subject impacts attention. The authors of the d2 Test of Attention indicated that scores on a second trial will always improve. Yet CP performance for Class A was significantly better on their first trial (without phone) than their second trial (with phone). This implies that the presence of a smartphone does negatively impact cognitive performance. The presence of your phone CAN impact performance from a min. of 2% up to 23%.
