Abstract Title
Cellphones and Metacognition
Additional Funding Sources
This project was funded by an undergraduate research mentorship grant from the Idaho State Board of Education.
Abstract
As technology advances, cell phones have grown to become a necessity in the everyday life of a majority of the population. This widespread use of cell phones, oftentimes in academic settings, leads to a plethora of new research that delves further into the consequences of these devices. Determining the effect cell phones may have on academic performance can produce information that will help both teachers and students adapt. Although it has been concluded that cell phones affect several aspects of cognition, metacognitive accuracy, or one’s ability to judge what has been accurately learned, remains to be an area that lacks a verdict. To study if cell phones affect metacognition, we extended Ward’s et al., 2017 study that showed the mere presence of cellphones (their salience) affects cognitive processes. To test if people are aware of these decrements, we had participants watch a 30-minute lecture and make judgments if they could correctly guess answers on a multiple-choice test. We expect that greater cell phone salience will cause worse metacognitive accuracy while those in the middle and least salient groups should have better accuracy. Furthermore, the harder questions will also have lower metacognitive accuracy while the easiest questions should have higher accuracy. This means that those with the hardest question and most salient phones will have the lowest accuracy while the easiest questions with lowest salience should have the most accuracy. If this hypothesis is supported, it may be helpful for students to disconnect and leave their phones behind while in class.
Cellphones and Metacognition
As technology advances, cell phones have grown to become a necessity in the everyday life of a majority of the population. This widespread use of cell phones, oftentimes in academic settings, leads to a plethora of new research that delves further into the consequences of these devices. Determining the effect cell phones may have on academic performance can produce information that will help both teachers and students adapt. Although it has been concluded that cell phones affect several aspects of cognition, metacognitive accuracy, or one’s ability to judge what has been accurately learned, remains to be an area that lacks a verdict. To study if cell phones affect metacognition, we extended Ward’s et al., 2017 study that showed the mere presence of cellphones (their salience) affects cognitive processes. To test if people are aware of these decrements, we had participants watch a 30-minute lecture and make judgments if they could correctly guess answers on a multiple-choice test. We expect that greater cell phone salience will cause worse metacognitive accuracy while those in the middle and least salient groups should have better accuracy. Furthermore, the harder questions will also have lower metacognitive accuracy while the easiest questions should have higher accuracy. This means that those with the hardest question and most salient phones will have the lowest accuracy while the easiest questions with lowest salience should have the most accuracy. If this hypothesis is supported, it may be helpful for students to disconnect and leave their phones behind while in class.