The impact of media multitasking on learning
Abstract
While multitasking is not a new concept, it has received increasing attention in recent years with the development of new media and technologies. Recent trends appear to suggest that multitasking is on the rise among the younger generation. The purpose of the study is to determine if students obtain more or less information in multitasking conditions. We examined the relationships of multitasking to attention, cognitive load and media with 130 college student participants. In this study, participants were given a timed (16 minutes) reading comprehension test in three conditions: Silence (only reading), Background multitasking (reading with a non-tested video shown simultaneously), and Test multitasking (reading with a tested video shown simultaneously) conditions. Our findings indicated that: (1) participants in the Background condition performed as well as those in the Silence condition, and (2) when participants were tested on their video comprehension, the group in the Test condition performed significantly better than the group in the Background condition. The results of this study suggest that cognitive load plays an important role in determining how much information is retained when students perform more than one task at a time.
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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 Lee et al., 2012
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References 27 · Cited by 128
- Authors
- Lee, J., Lin, L., & Robertson, T.
- Affiliations
- University of North Texas (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lee, Jennifer
- Venue
- Learning, Media and Technology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2011-04-27
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 94-104
- ISSN
- 1743-9884 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-9892
- OpenAlex
- W2096652216
- Cited by
- 128
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 4.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Learning Media and Technology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Keywords
- media multitasking, cognitive load, attention, reading comprehension, university students, information retention, dual-task performance
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