Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Over time, there has been a change in how students acquire and exchange information, with laptops and smartphones becoming increasingly important. The use of technology has evolved from being restrained du to the classroom to being crucial due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As education shifts towards hybrid models, students are now expected to learn at home, which can be challenging as excessive technology usage and a lack of self-discipline can lead to more distractions. This paper examines the effects of the influence of these distractions with the help of two concepts similar to assignments in students' lives: text comprehension & memorization, as well as example-based learning, in which the function of an apparatus was to be tested and described. The results show that distraction does not affect text comprehension but decreases information retention. Additionally, participants required more trials and repetitions to understand schemes in example-based learning when distracted.