Does texting make you slower?

Two studies had undergraduates ( n  = 237) walk a path in a university building which included walking up a set of stairs, through two hallways and walking down a flight of stairs back to the research lab. Subjects responded to text messages with a single word reply or multi-word reply and also serv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) N.J.), 2022-05, Vol.41 (5), p.2980-2984
Main Authors: Ferraro, F. R., Holte, Alex J., Giesen, Desiree
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Psychological aspects
Psychology
Social Sciences
Technology application
Text messaging
Walking
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Summary:Two studies had undergraduates ( n  = 237) walk a path in a university building which included walking up a set of stairs, through two hallways and walking down a flight of stairs back to the research lab. Subjects responded to text messages with a single word reply or multi-word reply and also served as their own control. Subjects were 5 s slower when texting and walking in Experiment # 1 (multi-word response) and 3 s slower when texting and walking in Experiment # 2 (single word response). No order effects (control condition first, experimental condition first) were observed in either study, ruling this out as a possible confound. While it was expected that texting and walking would impede walking speed when responding with a multi-word response, these results also show that texting disrupts walking even when respoding with a single, less attention demanding, word answer. Thus, even in a condition that requires minimal cognitive effort, walking speed was compromised while texting at the same time. Implications for these results are discussed.
ISSN:1046-1310
1936-4733
DOI:10.1007/s12144-020-00821-1