Receiving push-notifications from smartphone games reduces students learning performance in a brief lecture : an experimental study

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Many university students use mobile phones during study tasks for unrelated activities. It is known that using social networking while studying reduces the learning performance. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether using smartphone games during a lecture reduces the learning performance, and whether this is influenced by receiving push notifications. Ninety-three students were randomized to three conditions: In two gaming conditions (G), participants played a custom-made gaming-app (20 s) at 2-min intervals while watching a video mimicking a lecture. In one subgroup (GN+), the game app sent push notifications; in the other (GN-), no notifications were sent. Participants in the control group (C) watched the lecture without playing. Subsequently, participants answered multiple choice questions and estimated their own quiz performance. Comparing the quiz scores and subjective performance estimates of the three groups showed that the learning performance in GN+ was lower than in C (d = 0.51); no other differences were observed. Participants’ subjective performance estimations remained unaffected by the experimental condition. Possible implications of the divergence of the subjective estimate and objective performance are discussed, as well as limitations, such as the low complexity of the game used and the short lecture duration, not reflective of typical lectures.