Does a Silent, Face-Down Phone Really Drain Working Memory? Replications Say Not Much

A 2017 study by Adrian Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin reported that people performed better on working memory tasks when their phones were in another room than when on the desk. Later direct replications, including a 2022 pre-registered study by Ruiz Pardo and Minda at Western University with 383 analysed participants, found no effect of phone location. Meta-analyses by Parry, Hartanto and colleagues, and Böttger and colleagues pooled dozens of studies and found effects that were either very small or near zero. Researchers have pointed to limited statistical power across the field as a factor in the mixed results. The original headline-grabbing claim therefore looks considerably weaker than first reported.