The impact of smartphone deprivation on attentional bias in problematic smartphone users: Evidence from behavioral and physiological perspectives

This study innovatively applied smartphone deprivation and aimed to assess its behavioral and physiological effects in problematic smartphone users. In Experiment 1, 283 participants completed an investigation related to smartphone use, including 92 participants identified as problematic smartphone users. Based on an average smartphone unlocking interval of 19.67 min, the duration of smartphone deprivation was set to 20 min. After deprivation, the participants exhibited a significant increase in smartphone cravings and a decrease in heart rate. Experiment 2 applied a modified cueing task to explore problematic smartphone users’ attentional bias, in which smartphone-related and neutral pictures were selected as the materials. There were 22 and 23 participants in the smartphone-deprivation and control groups, respectively. In the deprivation group, reaction times (RTs) for smartphone-related pictures were longer than for neutral pictures. In Experiment 3, we incorporated electroencephalography technology to also assess a smartphone turned-off group. There were 16, 21, and 14 participants in smartphone deprivation, smartphone turned-off, and control groups, respectively. In both the smartphone deprivation and smartphone turned-off groups, participants had longer RTs on smartphone-related pictures than on neutral pictures. Furthermore, for participants in the deprivation group, N2 latencies in relation to smartphone-related pictures were earlier than those in relation to neutral pictures, while participants in the turned-off group had larger P3 amplitudes and earlier P3 latencies for invalid cues compared with valid cues. •Smartphone deprivation lasting 20 min has an effect on problematic smartphone users.•The smartphone deprivation might lead to the increase of smartphone craving and the decrease of heart rate.•Smartphone deprivation might cause the difficulty of attention disengagement on smartphone-related cues.•Turning off smartphone might induce them devote more cognitive resources to detect invalid cues in modified cueing task.