A new study in Computers in Human Behavior suggests that an over-reliance on smartphones may allow people to “offload” thinking to technology, resulting in lazier thinking. But the results of the study aren’t necessarily cause for alarm, argue Sabrina Golonka and Andrew Wilson.

Wilson and Golonka, who weren’t involved with the research, are psychology researchers at Leeds Beckett University. Their work investigates how we use resources in our environment—including our minds, bodies, and other objects—to solve tasks. “There’s nothing about smart phones that make them fundamentally different than a book for supporting analytical problem solving, other than the fact you tend to have the phone with you more often and it’s easier to find information,” argue Golonka and Wilson.

The authors of the Computers in Human Behavior paper argue otherwise, suggesting that because phones are a new and substantially different technology, they could be affecting our thinking in new ways.

The paper draws a distinction between analytical and intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is an automatic, effortless process that doesn’t rely heavily on cognitive resources. Analytic thinking is a more effortful, resource-heavy process that requires consciously working through a problem. People are “cognitive misers,” write the authors, preferring to rely on easier intuitive thinking wherever possible.

To test the link between this cognitive miserliness and smartphone usage, the researchers hit them with a series of questions that had a similar format. Each question had an apparently obvious answer that can be reached easily and intuitively but is wrong or a correct answer that requires effortful analytic thinking. They surveyed 190 participants recruited online using Amazon Mechanical Turk, testing their performance on a series of these questions and surveying them about their smartphone usage. To determine whether smartphones were used to find information that could be remembered or calculated, the survey also gathered information on time spent using smartphone-based search engines.

The results showed that there was no difference in performance between smartphone owners and non-owners, but there were differences between those who reported using smartphones very little, a medium amount, and a lot (with roughly 40 individuals in each category). Those in the “high usage” group of smartphone owners, and especially those who reported using search engines a lot, had lower performance on the tests of analytical thinking.

This result could mean that people with poor analytical thinking are also prone to overestimating the time they spend using smartphones, so the researchers conducted a follow-up study. A similar survey, with 208 Mechanical Turk participants, collected additional results on computer use and computer-based search engine use. To isolate the use of smartphones, particularly to find information rather than just general use, they also collected data on use of entertainment and social media, as well as data on general cognitive ability.

The results showed again that the high-usage group of smartphone owners scored lower on cognitive ability and analytical thinking. This group didn’t report spending more time doing computer searches than the other groups, so over-estimation wasn’t a concern.

But non-smartphone owners who reported high usage of computer-based search engines also scored lower on analytical thinking. “Although it appears that the use of [smartphones] as informational sources has much to do with proximity and ease of use, offloading thinking by relying on external information sources may extend past [smartphones] as well,” write the authors.

The results suggest that people with a less analytical thinking style are more likely to use smartphones to look up information that could easily be learned or remembered, the authors say. However, “the results are purely correlational,” emphasize Golonka and Wilson. There’s no way to tell whether an over-reliance on smartphones decreases analytical thinking or whether lower analytical thinking ability results in a heavier reliance on smartphones, they explain.

The authors of the papers acknowledge this limitation and suggest the possibility of a third factor influencing both analytical thinking and smartphone use. Given that heavy reliance on search engines is a very indirect measure of analytical thinking, it’s entirely possible that this third factor is the real explanation for the results.

Also important to consider is evidence that higher order reasoning doesn’t seem to change much with training or intervention. If this finding is applicable to analytical and intuitive thinking, it means that there’s probably no reason to be worried about smartphones changing how we think.

In fact, the paper’s results could suggest that “people with an intuitive cognitive style might actually benefit from access to a smartphone,” note Golonka and Wilson. “This would be an example of a biological system making up for a weakness by relying on the reliable presence of a technological helper.”

Computers in Human Behavior, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.029 (About DOIs).