Experimental effects of radio and television distractors on children’s performance on mathematics and reading assignments
Abstract
One explanation for why many students routinely choose to do their homework with a radio or TV operating is that this distraction facilitates studying. To investigate the validity of this explanation, the authors carried out two experiments with sixth-grade students who worked on two difficulty levels of individualized mathematics assignments (N = 12) and reading assignments (N = 9) under three distraction conditions: quiet; self-selected, self-regulated radio; and self-selected, self-regulated TV. The data yielded no evidence of sizable distractor effects on students' time spent studying, computational accuracy, reading comprehension, or reading rate. These results generally are consistent with the theoretical conceptualization of attention as flexible and adaptable.
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The other three experimental studies on study time found no relationship between media use while studying and time needed to complete an academic task.
“The other three studies found no relationship (Cool et al., 1994;Pool et al., 2000Pool et al., , 2003b)).”
From The consequences of media multitasking for youth: A review (2015) · cites this paper as Cool et al., 1994
Four of ten studies found no effect of media use while reading on reading comprehension.
“The other four studies found no effect (Bowman, Levine, Waite, & Gendron, 2010;Cool, Yarbrough, Patton, Runde, & Keith, 1994;Lee, Lin, & Robertson, 2012;Subrahmanyam et al., 2013).”
From The consequences of media multitasking for youth: A review (2015) · cites this paper as Cool et al., 1994
Another experimental study found that watching television while working on a math assignment had no effect on math performance.
“whereas the other study found that watching television while working on a math assignment had no effect on math performance (Cool et al., 1994).”
From The consequences of media multitasking for youth: A review (2015) · cites this paper as Cool et al., 1994
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- Authors
- Cool, V. A., Yarbrough, D. B., Patton, J. E., Runde, R., & Keith, T. Z.
- Affiliations
- University of Iowa (US)
- Alfred University (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Experimental Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1994-04
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 181-194
- ISSN
- 0022-0973 (ISSN-L)
- 1940-0683
- OpenAlex
- W1975989230
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 1.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Experimental Education (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
- Social Sciences › Education › Parental Involvement in Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Keywords
- radio, television, children's homework, mathematics achievement, reading comprehension, reading speed, computational accuracy, sixth grade students, study time
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