Stranger's Cell Phone Ring May Thwart Your Thinking

HealthDay, June, 2009 by Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter

As if folks needed another reason to be annoyed at other people's cell phones, researchers now report that just 30 seconds of a stranger's nearby ringtone can impair thinking, at least briefly.

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

The finding shows that "there are real-world implications for these sounds in our environment," said study lead author Jill Shelton. "They are distracting. They significantly disrupt performance in a classroom setting."

Shelton, who recently published the findings online in the Journal of Environmental Psychology , said, "this data says it's not just annoying. It's actually leading to impairment in learning, whether in a business meeting or in a...

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