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Psychological Research (2014) 78:661669 DOI 10.1007/s00426-013-0523-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Media multitasking and failures of attention in everyday life
Brandon C. W. Ralph David R. Thomson
James Allan Cheyne Daniel Smilek
Received: 4 June 2013 / Accepted: 19 October 2013 / Published online: 1 November 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Using a series of online self-report measures, we examine media multitasking, a particularly pervasive form of multitasking, and its relations to three aspects of everyday attention: (1) failures of attention and cognitive errors (2) mind wandering, and (3) attentional control with an emphasis on attentional switching and distractibility. We observed a positive correlation between levels of media multitasking and self-reports of attentional failures, as well as with reports of both spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering. No correlation was observed between media multitasking and self-reported memory failures, lending credence to the hypothesis that media multitasking may be specically related to problems of inattention, rather than cognitive errors in general. Furthermore, media multitasking was not related with self-reports of difculties in attention switching or distractibility. We offer a plausible causal structural model assessing both direct and indirect effects among media multitasking, attentional failures, mind wandering, and cognitive errors, with the heuristic goal of constraining and motivating theories of the effects of media multitasking on inattention.
Introduction
Consider for a moment the case of a student we will refer to as BR (perhaps even an author of the current paper!). On a typical workday, BR performs a variety of tasks while sitting at his desk, such as reading journal articles, analyzing data,
and writing papers on his computer. While he works, BR can almost always be found listening to music through his earphones. After a day of reading and writing (while listening to music), BR often goes home and begins to play computer games, while listening to even more music. Sometimes, BR may even have a movie playing in the background while he carries out his various activities. What we have just described is a case of media multitasking, which is the engagement of more than one medium in a given moment. Coincidentally (or maybe not), BR also reports that he often has trouble sustaining his attention, particularly during lectures. In the present study, we use an individual...