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@article{209300,
        author = {Farzin Bubere and Avin Thomas Thattil and Albin Anto and Vishnu Nair and Soly Shayil},
        title = {Morning Smartphone Use, Student Attention, and Study Engagement: A Pilot Survey and the Morning Dopamine Priming Model},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {5},
        pages = {1301-1306},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=209300},
        abstract = {Most students reach for their phones within minutes of waking, yet the academic consequences of this first contact are rarely examined as a distinct behaviour. This study proposes the Morning Dopamine Priming Model (MDPM), a conceptual framework that treats the first phone check of the day as a possible starting point for a chain of reward anticipation, attentional carry-over, and weaker engagement with study tasks. Drawing on established work on dopamine and reward prediction, incentive salience, notification-related distraction, and attention residue, the model sets out four stages and four testable propositions. To check whether the framework is plausible in a real student setting, a small exploratory survey of 50 undergraduate, postgraduate, and other young adult respondents was analysed descriptively. In this sample, 54% reached for their phone within 30 minutes of waking, 56% looked first at social media, messages, or email, 44% received notifications frequently or constantly while studying, 41% reported an urge to switch away while studying, and 44% reported losing interest quickly in long academic texts. Difficulty refocusing was reported by 57% of heavy users (4+ hours daily) against 26% of lighter users. The data are self-reported, cross-sectional, and drawn from a small convenience sample, so they illustrate rather than test the model. The paper concludes with limitations and a proposed agenda for longitudinal and experimental work.},
        keywords = {smartphone use, dopamine, incentive salience, attention residue, student engagement, conceptual framework},
        month = {October},
        }