By Amanda Gardner THURSDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- As if
folks needed another reason to be annoyed at other people's cell
phones, researchers now report that just 30 seconds of a
stranger's nearby ringtone can impair thinking, at least
briefly. Students unwittingly involved in a classroom experiment
saw their test scores sink after a fellow "student's" phone went
off. The finding shows that "there are real-world implications
for these sounds in our environment," said study lead author
Jill Shelton. "They are distracting. They significantly disrupt
performance in a classroom setting." Shelton, who recently
published the findings online in the Journal of Environmental
Psychology, said, "this data says it's not just annoying. It's
actually leading to impairment in learning, whether in a
business meeting or in a classroom or some other setting." She
is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the department of
psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, but completed
the study while a doctoral student at Lou