Distracted by Half the Conversation
Ever heard of encountering a "halfalogue"? That is what hearing half of a conversation is called. When you are in a public setting and someone is on their cell phone, or when you are in an office and someone is on the telephone a cubicle away, you experience a halfalogue. You only hear half of the dialog taking place.
Cornell University conducted a study to determine how distracted we tend to get from cell phone conversations.
Apparently we get quite distracted! While we only hear half of the conversation, that is exactly why we find it difficult to concentrate on our own tasks. Our minds subconsciously want to know what is being said in the other half of the conversation, and not being able to hear the other half makes us want to know even more.
The study presented undergraduates at Cornell with three scenarios – (1) two-person dialogues, (2) single-person monologues, and (3) people on telephones. When undergrads exposed to these scenarios tried to perform tasks, they did the worse when they encountered the halfalogue scenarios.
So now I know why I am more distracted by other people talking on telephones than I am when I hear full conversations or solo lectures. My subconscious is nosy!