Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

journals.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 393 posts

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#341

Post by logfromblammo »

My family calls this the "Crimson Tide Effect".

It was named thus because we were once eating in a bar/restaurant situated below ground level, with no mobile phone reception whatsoever. At one point, someone mentioned "that submarine movie with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman in it." We couldn't remember the name of the movie. We could almost recite the entire script, but couldn't say the name of the danged movie.

We tried (in vain) all the way through lunch. We managed the name of the submarine, the Alabama, but not the name of the movie. So the instant we left, off to the Internet movie database. Crimson Tide! Ah, because it was the Alabama! It makes sense now!

Most recent occurrence was two days ago, when we couldn't remember the name of the band that sang "Cult of Personality" for over 15 minutes. We could remember that they were a rare instance of a rock band with black people in it. We could remember that they were not a one-hit wonder, because they had one other hit.

I can only hope that memory storage has been repurposed for more useful data rather than simply lost.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#342

Post by erikpukinskis »

KGIII wrote: post #43
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep my phone on silent and turn off all vibrations. There's no way to notify me of anything until I look at it, but that's a feature.

I realize that I am not typical, but I seldom even have my phone turned on, and don't even take it with me very often. I was tethered to a phone for years. I am retired. I only take it if I am expecting to be idle. Then, I take it so I can browse while waiting. It feels kinda nice, frankly. I am not a technophobe. It's just nice to not be beholden to my phone.

Just because you don't do something all the time doesn't mean you're a -phobe. Someone who is a car lover isn't sitting in a stationary Honda Accord all day just because they love cars. Someone who loves food isn't eating junk food 24-7. That's called addiction.

A car lover seeks out beautiful cars, and maybe owns one or two that they take out enjoy when they have time.

A technophile is the same. What this discussion is about is addicts, not technophiles or technophobes.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#343

Post by VLM »

knodi123 wrote: post #121
jorgenev wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing Is this a true fact, or just a story people keep repeating because it sounds interesting? If it were true... how would we know? Presumably you would cite sources from Ancient Greece where people reported that they knew bards who could memorize a whole story with one listen, but like, there are sources from Ancie…

> If it were true... how would we know? If it were true, how would they know?!? It's like if my nephew came to my house and saw Star Wars, and then on the drive home with his mom, he told her the story and she (who never saw the movie) said "He recited the entire movie after one hearing!" No, what he did was remember most of the plot outline (imperfectly), and describe several scenes (imperfectly), and reproduce the…

There's also a huge difference between telling a formulaic story with traditional style and some sort of sermon like moral statement, vs photographic memory of a "where's waldo" book.

For example, look at formulaic rebooted sequel Hollywood movies. Given less than a paragraph outline, you can recite the details of most movies pretty well. Consider the first Star Trek Reboot movie, doesn't that compress down to only a couple lines, even if you talk for hours about lens flare and pew-pew sound effects? The second reboot movie compresses down to perhaps one or two complete paragraphs worth of raw data, its at least twice as complicated as the first movie.

Something like the iconic original Star Wars was tight because it provided a new formula, a pretty cool formula, but within that formula which admittedly is difficult to learn, the story is also not terribly long.

I guess I'm getting at teach a Bard about Hollywood Star Wars films for awhile, then learning specific movies only takes one viewing and is easy to memorize.

If you know the Adventure Time world and in-jokes, each episode is like two lines of text to memorize, maybe.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#344

Post by aoeuasdf1 »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #326
zulln wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always leave the dongle on in-ear headphones, that way I never forget them. Sure, the problem still exists for listening in a new environment (a friend's car, as someone here gave as example), but not with your own headphones. (mind you, I do not listen with in-ear headphones when I actually want to enjoy music, but they sure are a lot easier to bring with me than my "real headphones") Edit, as a bonus, as I almost…

I really enjoy the sound from in ear headphones, but I had an issue where wearing them too often was causing ear wax build up near my ear drum. I actually temporarily lost hearing in my left ear because because of this. Basically, the ear buds did not allow the ear wax to naturally flow out of the ear. This caused wax buildup near my ear drum and reduced the ability for my ear drum to vibrate. I had to rinse my ear w…

My experience was just that the wax buildup is gross, and the popping sound from the headphone losing, regaining, and losing seal was really loud and uncomfortable. Now I just use high quality over-ear headphones, which sound better to me anyway.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#345

Post by jimmahoney »

The statistically significant result is that scores on this test : "in each trial set, participants complete a series of math problems (information processing) while simultaneously updating and remembering a randomly generated letter sequence (information maintenance)" were significantly different for those with their phone silenced, face down on the desk next to them than for those with their phones in another room.

Given that this test essentially measures attention and distractions would seem to affect performance, I wonder what the results would be for some other object on the desk in the field of view - a book or a photo say - rather than just a phone.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#346

Post by [deleted] »

sxates wrote: post #90
nwatson wrote: post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

Without any sort of recording or script, how would one verify that the retelling was accurate to the original?

[deleted]

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#347

Post by swiley »

iaskwhy wrote: post #273
Bakary wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using headphones too often is a very good thing, unless there are at a sufficiently low volume (which is never the case).

My life changed slightly when I decided to enable the EU recommended setting for volume on the iPhone. Not sure if this feature is available outside of EU but it's great.

It is on android.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#348

Post by swiley »

moxious wrote: post #147
outworlder wrote: post #136

All of those "ditch the smartphone" comments are so cute. I'm on devops. Can't ditch the smartphone.

People want to want to ditch the smartphone. Very few actually want to. Proof: sales in the hundreds of millions. It sucks when capitalism shows people what they really want because sometimes it pierces people's bubbles of who they think they are and they find out who they actually are.

Having a two way internet pager (being able to read and send email) is good. Almost everything else about smartphones is really not that good but worth tolerating for email.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#350

Post by ninly »

JoshMnem wrote: post #139
nwatson wrote: post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

> Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. They had amazing memories, but they couldn't memorize large works like that after just one hearing. There are techniques that allow one to remember information like that, but it still requires effort. Here are two great books on that subject: - The Art of Memory by Frances Yates (cov…

Haven't read the other one, but the Yates is great. Another indispensable book for historical context about the Classical transition from oral to literate culture (and its implications for memory, education, and Greek thought) is:

- Preface to Plato, by Eric Havelock

Post reply on HN