Investigating The Effect of Smartphone Addiction on Executive Function and Fluid Intelligence in Neurotypical Older Adults

Abstract

Cognitive Reserve is considered to be influenced by a variety of factors such as level of educational attainment, number of languages known, engagement in mentally and physically stimulating leisure activities. With a growing older population moving towards digital era, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes necessary to look into the impact of digital technology use especially, smartphone devices on cognitive functioning of older adults. Previous studies have only looked into the effect of technology training using computer applications and have not tried to quantify the smartphone technology use to understand the extent of its impact on cognitive abilities in older adults. Hence, the current study aims to explore, the effect of smartphone addiction on cognitive abilities of executive function and fluid intelligence. The study recruited 30 neuro-typical older adults as participants who passed the technological activity survey, created by the researcher which includes yes/ no questions regarding the type, duration and purpose of smartphone or any other technology device usage. This was followed by an administration of Smartphone Addiction Scale-short version on the selected participants to quantify the level of addiction and divided them into three groups: low, mid and high smartphone addiction. A series of cognitive tests in the domain of executive function and fluid intelligence were carried and results compared across the three groups. The executive function test included Trail making test, Alternate verbal fluency test and Digit Span test –Forward, Backward whereas the Raven’s coloured progressive matrices (RCPM) was used to estimate fluid intelligence. The results revealed that individuals in high smartphone addiction group performed significantly better than those in low and mid addiction group in all the executive function test except Digit span –forward. RCPM accuracy scores showed clear superiority in performance for those with high smartphone addiction, however the RCPM total time taken to complete the task was comparable in all the three groups. The superior performance demonstrated by high smartphone addiction group shows, better cognitive flexibility, and larger working memory span as well as fluid cognitive abilities in older adults with intense smartphone usage. This can be attributed to novel learning and cognitive engagement employed through smartphone usage which might be aiding in strengthening the existing brain connections and improving the efficiency of cognitive resource usage. The study concludes that extensive use of smartphone promotes better and efficient cognitive functions contributing to cognitive reserve in older adults. Future research should try to quantify the smartphone addiction domains and also include accuracy and error types when assessing Trail making test to determine if accuracy is as sensitive a parameter as reaction time in evaluating cognitive function in older adults. Moreover, replication of the study in larger population and more diverse population with and without smartphone addiction using assessment tools with established psychometric values would help in early detection of cognitive impairments.