Effect on human attention of exposure to the electromagnetic field emitted by mobile phones

Lee TMC, Ho SMY, Tsang LYH, Yang SYC, Li LSW, Chan CCH,

NeuroReport 12:729-731, 2001

This study examined the effect of exposure to the electromagnetic field emitted by mobile phones on human attention. Three measures of attention were administered to 72 teenagers, 37 of whom were mobile phone users.

The results showed that the mobile phone users performed better on one of the three measures of attention than did the non-mobile phone users. The results suggest that exposure to the electro- magnetic field emitted by mobile phones may have a mild facilitating effect on attention functions, which is consistent with previous observations that exposure to the electromagnetic field has a facilitating effect on cognitive processing.

The possibility that mobile phone users may be naturally better at multiple tasking tasks was discussed.