The Effects of Smartphones on Working Memory

In the end, he looked at 56 effect sizes on how phones affect our minds from 27 studies in 25 publications. Though it is similar to what Ward found, Perry's analysis also revealed the impact on working memory was much smaller than initial studies indicated. The important difference here with this meta analysis compared to the ward 2017 paper is the magnitude of the effect. This matters because it can tell us whether our phones are diverting our attention by their mere presence or simply affecting one aspect of our cognition slightly.