Do cell phones pose distraction, adversely affect memory recall?

Ring-a-dingy-ding...We've all been distracted by the varied melodic rings of another person's cell phone - often when they should be turned off-- in a seminar, during a live performance, in a classroom, during the church sermon. (What's that? Just a minute, yes that's actually my ringtone...Sorry, what were you asking me?) Now a study from Washington University in St. Louis suggests our reaction may go beyond amusement or irritation...it may be a big enough distraction to adversely affect our memory recall.

"In any setting where people are trying to acquire knowledge and trying to retain that information in some way, a distraction that may just seem like a common annoyance to people may have a really disruptive effect on their later retention of that information," said Jill Shelton, a postdoctoral psychology fellow in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study. The study appears in the Journal of Environmental Psychology