Want to get work done? Put your phone out of sight

Researchers have found that the mere presence of a handset is distracting - even if it is not your own. Photo / 123rf

If you want to get something done, you need to do more than turn your mobile phone off. You should also put it out of sight.

Researchers have found that the mere presence of a handset is distracting - even if it is not your own.

And they are likely to sidetrack you, even if they are not ringing or 'pinging' with text messages.

People asked to carry out electronic tests of their attention spans were found to perform worse when a mobile phone was present than other people performing in the presence of a paper notepad. Scientists from Hokkaido University in Japan said that their findings show that it is harder to concentrate when one of the electronic gadgets is present.

The effect was most marked on people who are not regular users of mobile phones.

In tests on 40 undergraduates, Associate Professor Jun-ichiro Kawahara and a colleague split the subjects into two groups.

One was asked to carry out tests in the presence of an Apple iPhone next to a computer monitor, and the others in the presence of a notebook.

The test involved asking the participant to search for a particular character amid a jumble of other characters on the screen. Researchers measured the time it took to find the target.

The results of the experiment found that those with the mobile phone took longer to find the character 'indicating that participants were automatically distracted by the presence of the phone', the authors said. The researchers suggest that people are 'drawn to the presence of a mobile phone', although there are individual differences in how people attempt to ignore it.

In conclusion, Professor Kawahara said: 'The mere presence of a mobile phone was a distraction among infrequent internet users.' The evidence that mobile phones is distracting has been piling up in recent years.

Many studies have shown that talking on mobile phones impairs driving performance.

Another finding is that the 'unpredictability' of listening to one half of a mobile phone conversation also distracts people, and other studies have found that placing a mobile phone in view has a negative impact on the quality of face-to-face communications.

Holding a mobile phone makes you less likely to get a fair hearing from others.

One study found that holding a phone in your hand when you are talking has been found to reduce the amount of empathy shown to you by listeners.