Physiological Effects Experienced After Introduction of a Distraction and Its Effects on Performance

Abstract

Many college-aged students are immersed in a world full of distractions. These distractions can be attributed to the rapid-growing technology of smartphones, the growing social climate, or a plethora of other factors. These distractions may have a large effect on the student’s stress level and ability to focus on the task at hand. We examined how a student’s performance and stress level changed when participating in gameplay both in silence and with a designated distraction, a two-minute audio recording. Once the study was concluded, we compared both the differences in physiological responses and game-score between the baseline, no distraction gameplay, and distraction gameplay. When comparing the differences in heart rate, breath rate, and skin conductance over the course of the study, we calculated p-values of .46, .70, and .53 respectively. For the game-score, we calculated a p-value of .001. Overall, we found that there was no significant physiological response to the distraction; however, there was a significant difference in performance of the games with and without distraction.