Cell Phone Rings May Interrupt Thinking

Researchers now report that just 30 seconds of a stranger's nearby ringtone can impair thinking, at least briefly as found on MedicineNet.com.

Students unknowingly involved in a classroom experiment saw their test scores sink after a fellow "student's" phone went off.

Study leader author Jill Shelton said, "there are real-world implications for these sounds in our environment and they are distracting. They significantly disrupt performance in a classroom setting."

Shelton said the data shows that it's not just annoying when other people's cell phones ring. It is actually leading to impairment in learning, whether in a business meeting or in a classroom or some other setting.

She found that cell phone rings may also harm recall. More on recall.

Prior research has also indicated that the human brain can only attend to a finite amount of stimuli at a time.

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