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Recent studies suggest that the 'mere presence' of a mobile phone impairs social interactions and neuropsychological test performance. The present study examined whether the presence of a mobile phone causes spatial bias toward the device during a visual search task. Participants identified a target among spatially distributed non-targets. We manipulated three factors: device presence (mobile phone or notepad), target congruency (congruent or incongruent), and attentional load (set size 8 or 24). A mobile phone (or a notepad in the control condition) was placed on the left side of the computer screen. Participants also completed a questionnaire to measure Internet usage and attachment. Participants with high scores on the questionnaire rapidly identified the target at the congruent (same side as the phone) location, but the mere presence effect did not occur in this condition. In contrast, participants with low scores on the questionnaire demonstrated the mere presence effect, but no spatial bias was observed. These results suggest that the mere presence effect can be modulated by individual differences in the degree to which a device is appealing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When two visual targets are presented in rapid succession, perception of the second target is deteriorated if the temporal lag between the two targets is short (0–300 ms). This ‘attentional blink’ (AB) phenomenon has been believed to occur only when the second target is followed by a backward mask or when there is a task switching between two targets. The present study revealed another determining factor for the occurrence of the AB, the presence or absence of a distractor stream. Five experiments examined the effect of possible confounding factors in the extant literature and suggested that the mere presence of a distractor stream affects the processing of targets even when the observers tried to ignore them, resulting in a processing delay. This effect is discussed in a model of AB deficit in terms of decay of the second target's representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]