A few weeks ago, I wandered into a small bookshop in Amsterdam and I came across this book (see above). I’m working on improving my Dutch, especially in psychological sciences, and this author is a clinical neuropsychologist. It felt like the perfect combination for me, so I decided to give it a try. As expected, it helped me expand my vocabulary in Dutch. However, I only managed to read up to the end of Chapter 3 (out of 11 in total).
He summarizes research findings and provides citations — which is great, really! But here’s the thing: I’m a curious (not lazy) reader. Some of his claims struck me as rather bold, so I decided to verify them. For instance, on page 53, he wrote that Parry and his colleagues (2023) found a negative effect of the mere presence of a mobile phone on working memory. The author also mentioned that Parry and his colleagues were reserved about their results, but he never explained why. So, I looked up the article myself — you can read it here if you’re interested: (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15213269.2023.2286647). I will include a quote below:
‘Across cognitive functions, only a single statistically significant pooled effect was found. Working memory capacity was negatively impacted by the mere presence of a smartphone, while results for the remaining cognitive functions produced null summary effects. The analysis also finds that there is substantial methodological heterogeneity and generally poor statistical power in the domain. Overall, while the current meta-analysis provides limited support for a negative albeit smaller than theorized brain drain effect due to the mere presence of a smartphone, given methodological concerns, the extent to which the current body of literature can support or refute the hypothesis is limited.’
It turns out the authors were cautious because the studies they analyzed — it was a meta-analysis — had issues with statistical power and methodological consistency. If you don’t mention those limitations, you’re not lying, but the message (in my humble opinion) changes.
Here’s another example. On page 47, the author reports (or perhaps summarizes) a finding showing a strong negative relationship between adolescents’ mobile phone use (ages 12–20, for more than 60 minutes a day) and their attention/concentration abilities. That sounded a bit vague to me — what exactly does “mobile phone usage” mean? Which activities on the phone did the researchers investigate? So I checked the original study. You can find the study here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1022 . I quote from this study:
‘After adjusted for confounders, inattention in adolescents was significantly associated with MP ownership, the time spent on entertainment on MP per day, the position of the MP during the day and the mode of the MP at night. The strongest association between inattention and the time spent on the MP was among students who spent more than 60 minutes per day playing on their MP.’
By “entertainment,” they specifically meant playing games and browsing the internet. That context changes the interpretation entirely. Without those details, one might assume that texting for an hour could harm attention — but that’s not what the study found. Their findings mainly concerned mobile phone use for entertainment purposes.
So, rather than learning things halfway, I think I’ll stick with fiction books for now. Part of me feels a little sad about not finishing the book I paid €18.99 for, but honestly, I can’t keep double-checking every citation and still enjoy the reading experience.