Question

Cell phone use and texting are increasingly common, especially among teens. And that could be a problem. Texting affects learning and performing on test, a new study finds. So a Montana teen, Colin decided to test that.

They asked 47 classmates to take part in a two-part experiment. The goal was to test how well these students understood written material. Each one had to read a paragraph or two about a certain topic, then answer questions about it.

In the first part, the participants had 15 minutes to understand and then answer questions about six readings. Throughout this test, they met no distractions.

During a new set of readings, the brothers sent messages to the participants’ cell phones every 90 seconds. In each message, there were questions that required a reply.

Participants should have scored better on the second test because it was easier. In fact, they scored worse when distracted by messages. Only a few students scored as well when replying to messages as they did when undistracted. But importantly, nobody performed better during the texting part.

The brothers presented details of their findings at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Boys and girls scored equally poorly while texting, the brothers noticed. Older participants didn’t do any better than younger ones. And it didn’t matter if a student thought he was good at multitasking. On average, the brothers found that even students who were confident of their abilities did just as poorly while texting. Surprisingly, even though the students remembered less of what they read while texting, most of them answered questions in messages perfectly.

“Our teachers are very happy to see these results,” says Coler. The teens’ new data strongly support their teachers’ opinion that texting while studying is a serious distraction.

1. What did Colter and Colin want to test?

A. Cell phone use and texting are more common.

B. Teens should avoid cell phone use and texting.

C. Texting affects students’ performance on test.

D. The effect of texting differs from person to person.

2.What can we learn from the two-part experiment?

A. The written material in the two parts was the same.

B. Participants in part 2 received more than one message.

C. The time of the test in two parts was the same.

D. All the participants were distracted by messages.

3.The brothers’ findings were related to participants’ ________.

A. reading performance B. quality

C. writing ability D. reading speed

4. From the results of the experiment, we can find _________.

A. boys were better at multitasking than girls

B. the easier the tests were, the more mistakes were made

C. nobody did good jobs in the two-part experiment

D. some students’ test results were not affected by texting

5.What’s Colter’s teachers’ attitude toward the results?

A. Surprised. B. Worried.

C. Satisfied. D. Serious.

Answer 1