The Effect of Smartphone Environments on the Encoding of Life Science Terminology: A sLORETA Study

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of smartphone environments on life science terminology learning, focusing on EEG activation changes. To this end, the task performance environment was divided into three conditions: a smartphone-free environment, a smartphone-present environment, and a smartphone-notification environment. Twenty-five second-grade high school students participated in the study. EEG data were collected during life science terminology encoding tasks in each environment, and sLORETA analysis analyzed EEG activation differences. The results were as follows: First, students achieved significantly higher scores when performing rote encoding tasks in a smartphone-free environment than in a smartphone-present environment. Second, no significant EEG activation differences were found during meaningful encoding tasks across the three smartphone environments. Third, during rote encoding tasks in a smartphonepresent environment, the beta band activation in the right hippocampal gyrus of the limbic lobe was significantly greater than in a smartphone-free environment. Additionally, when performing rote encoding tasks in a smartphone-notification environment, the beta band activation was significantly greater in several regions of the right frontal lobe(the superior frontal gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus, the medial frontal gyrus, and the inferior frontal gyrus), and the insula of the right sub-lobar than in a smartphone-free environment. These results suggest that the physical presence and notifications of smartphones increase cognitive load, affecting attention and memory processes critical for learning life science terminology. Furthermore, these findings emphasize the importance of managing smartphones in creating an efficient learning environment.