Cognition - BrainLOG
As I am sure you are aware, technology has taken over our lives. Enhancing health through tracking apps, breakthroughs in science, instant access to information, plus shopping and banking from your couch.…. This all sounds amazing. But many people, particularly parents, and the scientific community, are concerned about the implications this may have on our cognition.
Spending time on a smartphone, scrolling on social media, relying on search engines, and playing video games are many people's favorite activities. But they are also the activities that researchers are most concerned with. This technology has changed the way we communicate with one another and engage with our world. Is it possible that it has also inadvertently changed the way we think, specifically higher-order cognitive skills like problem-solving, reasoning, attention, and short-term, long-term, and working memory?
While research has identified effects on memory, there is little research that shows a significant impact on other executive functions. That is not the green light you may think it is. We have numerous other higher order executive functions that should be examined for immediate and long-term effects at each developmental stage. Additionally, other studies have concluded significant impacts on social and emotional skills, as well as having an impact on mental health.
When considering the levels of processing cognitive theory, it is easy to see why there is concern. According to this theory, how we encode information determines how well we remember it (Goldstein, 2019). When we are constantly presented with changing stimuli, our limited cognitive capacity often does not have the time to make new information meaningful by making associations, mentally or emotionally connecting, or relating it to prior knowledge. Without taking the time and making the effort to utilize our web of concepts, we are easily distracted, jumping from one stimulus to another, only processing information with shallow encoding that we are likely to forget. Some of you may be thinking, “No big deal, I could just look it up again.” And you are right, which compounds the problem.
For better or worse, this technology is here to stay. It is imperative that we continue to do research that uses scientific methods and is peer reviewed. That begins with choosing the right participants that are representative of the population and relevant to the research topic.
In “An Examination of the Potential Lingering Effects of Smartphone Use on Cognition,” the study began with 105 volunteers college students, reduced to 50 based on results from a Likert scale questionnaire. Using only college students, with a mean age of twenty-one, this sample is not a good representation of the larger population. Additionally, the use of volunteers, with almost 2x as many females to males, the conclusion of this study cannot be widely applied.
I believe conducting similar studies on separate age groups, with the intention of comparing them, can yield valuable insight on the effects of smartphones at different developmental stages which can be used in making guidelines and recommendations.
The study “Cognitive Functioning and Social Media: Has Technology Changed Us” took another approach, using a crowdsourcing marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTURK) to select their 70 participants. Still, there were more females and the sample was mostly white (Lara & Bococh, 2021). While using a program relying on MANOVA does consider many variables during selection, I find this is also not a good representation of the relevant population, as being a user of MTURK could indicate this is a tech savvy person, more inclined to use social media than the average citizen. However, this could open the door to a new line of research that examines my suspicion that people who use online marketplaces spend more time using social media.
Once a sample is selected, it is imperative to use sound research designs, tests, and measurement tools to collect the data. In “Cognitive Functioning and Social Media: Has Technology Changed Us,” the researchers rely on standardized tests such as SONTUS, Stroop, and Corsi. Stroop and Corsi are simple but reliable tools that measure inhibition and working memory respectfully, addressing the executive functions the researchers are interested in (Lara & Bococh, 2021). Future studies can be done with research designs combining SONTUS and tests that measure other cognitive functions or continue to use Stroop and Corsi with other social media measurement scales to confirm validity of conclusions.
“Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” is a research study that focuses on memory. Appropriately, they also use standardized tests in their research design. A Stroop test that examines interference and automatic cognitive process, a simple effect test to assess interaction effect, a recognition task to measure recall and how participants apply information, and a recall task to measure memory capacity (Sparrow, et. al, 2011). Each of these tools provides valuable information about how participants think, their working memory, and long-term memory, providing researchers with evidence to support their hypothesis. This data supports how search engines change how we think and how we think about information, leading to other research questions, possibly how social media changes how we think about and approach relationships.
Each study has its own limitations that must be considered. The study by Lara & Bokoch, exploring social media usage effect on cognition, used self-reporting and online tests with no environmental control, allowing them to only make a correlational conclusion (Lara & Bococh, 2021). While the information is insightful, I think analyzing the relationship between cognitive functions and social media usage requires a more controlled design, and a larger, more diverse sample.
“An Examination of the Potential Lingering Effects of Smartphone Use on Cognition” is limited as well by a lack of control. Their design relied on trackers that participants were aware of, possibly causing participants to behave differently (Sparrow, et. al, 2011) Additionally, their sample consisted of only college students, not representative of the overall population. While this study also can only make correlational implications, I find taking measurements across a 4-week period to monitor changes increases the validity of their conclusions, but is still in need of replication.
The results of these studies were not exactly what I would have expected. While search engines affecting our memory was confirmed, which I personally have felt the effect of, the other two studies imply our cognition is not significantly affected. This may sound like good news, but I am still suspicious. We need more research, more replicated, peer-reviewed studies for each specific cognitive skill across all ages, and more longitudinal studies to really know how technology is affecting our cognition.
So even though this research yields no giant red flags, I suggest to all my readers that we use caution. Even if harmful cognitive effects are ruled out, we must still consider our physical, emotional, and mental health.
References –
Frost, P., Donahue, P., Goeben, K., Connor, M., Cheong, H. S., & Schroeder, A. (2019, November). An Examination of the Potential Lingering Effects of Smartphone Use on Cognition. Shapiro Library - SNHU; Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(6). https://eds-p-ebscohost- com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=61fbcc01-145c-4b66-8c64-676655a26adc%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=139765290&db=asn
Goldstein, B. E. (2019). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience (5th ed.). Cengage.
Lara, R. S., & Bokoch, R. (2021). Cognitive Functioning and Social Media: Has Technology Changed Us? Acta Psychologica, 221(103429), 103429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103429
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011, August 1). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Shapiro Library - SNHU; American Association for the Advancement of Science. https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=bbc0bcab-771c-4fe8-a28c-567d40ad69f1%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.27978404