Abstract : <p>Distraction is especially detrimental to human functioning in situations requiring cognitive processing. The study was designed to find if visual distraction during written examination can negatively affect the student performance. A cross sectional study. This study was conducted in the College of Medicine/University of Baghdad from September 2020 to February 2021. The study included 118 final year medical students. They were divided into 2 groups, group 1(55 students) which was given the question set with 5 questions containing visual distraction and group 2 (63 students) which was given the same question set without visual distraction. Mean scores of both group were compared. The female to male ratio was 2:1. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.734 based on Standardized Items. The mean scores of group 1 and 2(out of 9) were 6.87 &plusmn; 2.135 and 7.51 &plusmn; 1.664 respectively with statistically significant difference (p value = 0.04). The mean scores of the 4 questions containing the distractors (out of 4) were 3.02 &plusmn; 1.080 and 3.52 &plusmn; 0.948 respectively with statistically significant difference (p value = 0.008). The study revealed a negative effect of visual distraction on the students performance during written examination. Further studies are needed specially in real life situation.</p>