We’ve all been there — sitting in a public place, and feeling like that person over there, talking on their cell phone, is so annoying. Why are they so annoying? What makes a cell phone conversation that you overhear so distracting?
Four researchers, led by Lauren Emberson (2010) from Cornell University, set to find out.
Previous research has shown that we don’t seem to be as distracted when listening to a full dialogue between two people as when we are listening to a “halfalogue” — that is, just one side of a two-sided conversation.
In two small studies conducted exclusively on 41 college undergraduates, the researchers devised tasks to measure how distracting mobile phone conversations are when we hear only one side of the conversation. Specifically, they were interested in measuring whether such conversations could affect our ability to concentrate on a task that demanded good attention in order to complete successfully.
In the first study, 24 undergrads were seated in front of a computer and told they were going to complete two tasks that demanded their complete and undivided attention:
One involved tracking a moving dot with the computer mouse, and the other involved responding to letters presented on the computer screen. They were given 1 min of practice with each of these tasks in silence. They were then instructed that they would be completing these tasks a number of times and would sometimes hear speech from the two computer speakers situated on either side of the monitor. Participants were asked to focus their attention on the attentionally demanding tasks.
They found significant differences in a person’s ability to concentrate on both tasks at hand when listening to half a conversation (the “halfalogue”) as opposed to silence, a monologue, or a complete two-sided conversation.
Since the researchers reasoned this effect may be caused by the unpredictability of simply the sounds of talking themselves, they conducted a second experiment that made the halfalogue conversation filtered and incomprehensible. They found that it isn’t the mere acoustic unpredictability itself — speech comprehension is necessary in order to reduce a person’s attention to the task at hand.
The researchers suggest that the reason that half a conversation is so distracting — and therefore, most cell phone conversations we overhear — is because the speech processing part of our brains is drawn to make sense of the pattern we’re hearing. Since it generally can’t do this with only half the data, our brains are straining under the load of this processing task. In a normal conversation, speech is predictable — Person A talks, then Person B responds, and so on.
In half a conversation, you don’t know what Person B is saying, so you also don’t know when or how Person A will respond. This is curious to the speech processing centers of our brains, apparently, and causes us to become distracted in trying to make sense of the conversation.
Finally, the researchers note why this finding may have more generalizable importance. We know from previous research that cell phone conversations by a driver in an automobile can negatively impact driving performance. In fact, some states have gone so far as to enact laws banning cell phone use while driving.
But this study demonstrates something even more disturbing that few lawmakers have considered — simply overhearing a cell phone conversation in the car (e.g., from one of your passengers) may also be significantly distracting. It may be sufficient to reduce a driver’s reaction time and performance, although further study would be needed to verify this hypothesis.
So now you know why cell phone conversations can be so distracting — it’s your brain’s attempt to make sense of the conversation without sufficient data (e.g., the other side of the conversation) it’s used to having. And it’s not just mobile phone conversations — it’s really any conversation conducted where you can only hear one side of it.
Reference:
Emberson LL, Lupyan G, Goldstein MH, & Spivey MJ (2010). Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech Is More Distracting. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS PMID: 20817912
9 comments
To me, the question that needs answering is why talking to someone on a cell phone is so much more distracting than talking to a passenger. I mean, you can hold a banana up to your ear and talk to a passenger, and you will be orders of magnitude more alert than if you were having a convo on a phone. It has puzzled me for years; lately I have been thinking it must have something to do with your brain’s awareness of its location. In a conversation, it assumes you are located near the other person. If the other person is a passenger, no problem, you are both in the car. But if you are talking to someone in his living room, part of your brain assumes you are in the living room, too, and there is no need to watch for traffic.
I think the bigger question is, why can’t people function in silence for a sizeable portion of their day? Do you really have to talk to someone why you are shopping, driving, eating a meal in a restaurant?
Has our culture become so bankrupt for experience that we have to have interaction 24 hours a day 7 days a week? Maybe this will become a new DSM 5 diagnosis: overstimulation syndrome!!!
Joel, I think we’re seeing a fundamental shift in U.S. human social connectedness due largely to the impact of cellular devices, such as cell phones, smartphones, Android devices and iPhones. It’s a changing world. People no longer have to be alone while eating a meal alone. Since human beings are intrinsically social creatures, this seems like a logical result of our own creations.
As for whether this is an inherently “good” thing or “bad” thing, I’m not certain. I think there are much greater evils in this world (such as helicopter parents) that would get my attention first. But I do agree that this is a changing society where our comfort level of “being alone” is not what it once was…
On the subject of distracted driving, what I don’t understand is that if people agree (lawmakers, car manufacturers, and possibly even cell-phone providers themselves) – why don’t they simply enact a technological solution? Make a system that will allow a car to turn off a cell-phone and block everything except for 911.
This should be able to be relatively easily done by having two transmitters in the car that will tell a phone when it is in proximity. Two are needed to tell if a phone is inside the car or outside on the sidewalk – if inside, the differential between the two signals (measured probably by a Doppler shift in the frequency, or perhaps by some kind of binary code, similar to GPS) will be essentially the same. If outside the car, they will be markedly different.
If the car is moving at more than say 4 inches per second, phones are disabled. This would allow a person to call in a traffic jam, where there is arguably less to be distracted by – then again, if you’re in a traffic jam creeping along at an inch every second, the chance of a cell-phone-distraction-rear-ending goes up..
If a call is in progress, the phone alerts the user that it’s about to hang up, or places the other party on hold if the car is in “traffic jam creep” mode – unless the call is to 911. Other emergency numbers could be allowed through, although how the phone knows what they are is a problem – some standard “emergency phone information protocol” would have to be developed. (That would have benefits outside of just this).
The car would implement a femto-cell concept and act as a cell tower for anything inside the car (are all cell phone carriers in the US finally using the same physical transmission protocols? This might be a problem if they use different frequency bands and/or transmission schemes)
If they really wanted to do this, they could. Sure, some people would find ways to get around it – reprogram the phone’s baseband, muck with the car much with the phone antenna electrically, etc (although ‘hard’ is a relative term..) But most people I’m sure wouldn’t. Lawmakers put in something to make selling “circumvention” devices illegal – they could already try to stretch the DMCA to do this (printer manufacturers have done this with the ‘ink chips’ some use).
So, anybody in industry care to comment why this isn’t done – or is it being talked about, just not openly for obvious reasons?
Could this be why we don’t like being “talked to”, or lectured?
Normally this does not require a response and often a response is discouraged or out-right forbidden.
Okay, so people can’t “overhear” what the person on the other side of the phone is saying to the person who is speaking in front of a bunch of people, being “annoying.” I understand the psychology behind all of this, but honestly I think it’s up to all adults who has a cell phone to use it accordingly. Who cares what the other person is saying? Are people that innately nosy? I have NO problem with anyone talking on a phone, as long as they’re not yelling, or cursing. I understand as well, that there are places that cell phones should not be used in, like hospitals and other places where it could interfere with electronic equipment.. Other than that, it’s a free world.. This is America, why can’t I have a conversation on a cell phone with my husband or best friend, while I’m waiting for the doctor to call my name??? I think it has to do more with envy and being too inquisitive!
One more thing. I just re-read this article and I had to leave another comment regarding using a cell
phone in public places. I can understand there is a
time and a place for everything, but you can’t control family emergencies, that can come up every now and again. This is exactly one of the reasons I
bought a cell phone in the first place! lol.
Give the kids some tips…
I don’t know why, but I get stressed out when someone has a phone conversation within five feet of me, or in the same room. It’s mainly with cell phones, since with landlines it doesnt happen. I have no clue what causs it. I’m not usually a stressful person. I think it’s the emotions the person has that are projected into the room (by tone of voice) that sets it off. This could also be another way the conversations are so distracting. Our brains wonder why that person is sounding that way and try to find out why.
Bridgette, I know that everyone has rights in this counrty. But to be polite, even if it’s an emergency, it’s not right to talk on a cellphone right next to or ten feet away from someone (now if you were there first, and no one was around, that’s a different story). Anyway, it’s invading their hearing space and causing all of this ear pollution in a space that should be calm. It would be better if you went outside for your call. If the was that important, then the appointment can wait. If it was less important, the call can wait.
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