Why students multi-task media even though it hurts their performance
- From: Lance <lancegary@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 16:13:45 -0700 (PDT)
Multitasking may hurt your performance, but it makes you feel better
April 30th, 2012 in Psychology & Psychiatry
People aren't very good at media multitasking - like reading a book
while
watching TV - but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, a new
study
suggests.
The findings provide clues as to why multitasking is so popular, even
though
many studies show it is not productive.
Researchers had college students record all of their media use and
other
activities for 28 days, including why they used various media sources
and what
they got out of it.
The findings showed that multitasking often gave the students an
emotional
boost, even when it hurt their cognitive functions, such as studying.
"There's this myth among some people that multitasking makes them
more
productive," said Zheng Wang, lead author of the study and assistant
professor
of communication at Ohio State University.
"But they seem to be misperceiving the positive feelings they get
from
multitasking. They are not being more productive - they just feel
more
emotionally satisfied from their work."
Take, for example, students who watched TV while reading a book. They
reported
feeling more emotionally satisfied than those who studied without
watching TV,
but also reported that they didn't achieve their cognitive goals as
well, Wang
said.
"They felt satisfied not because they were effective at studying, but
because
the addition of TV made the studying entertaining. The combination of
the
activities accounts for the good feelings obtained," Wang said.
Wang conducted the study with John Tchernev, a graduate student in
Communication
at Ohio State. Their results appear online in the Journal of
Communication and
will be published in a future print edition.
Wang said many studies done in laboratory settings have found that
people show
poorer performance on a variety of tasks when they try to juggle
multiple media
sources at the same time: for example, going from texting a friend,
to reading a
book, to watching an online video.
But surveys show that media multitasking is only becoming more
popular. The
question, Wang said, is why do people do so much multitasking if it
actually
impairs their performance?
To answer that question, Wang said they had to move out of the
laboratory and
into real life. They recruited 32 college students who agreed to
carry a
cellphone-like device and report on their activities three times each
day for
four weeks.
The participants reported on each media use (such as computer, radio,
print,
television, radio) and sub types (for computer use, whether they were
web
browsing, using social networking, etc.) They reported the type of
activity, the
duration, and whether any other activities were performed
simultaneously (in
other words, whether they were multitasking).
They also provided their motivations for each activity or combination
of
activities from a list of seven potential needs, including social,
fun/entertainment, study/work, and habits/background noise. For each
need, they
reported the strength of the need on a 10-point scale, and whether
those needs
were met on a 4-point scale.
The results showed that participants were more likely to multitask
when they
reported an increase in cognitive needs (such as study or work) or
habitual
needs or both.
That means, for example, that the students were more likely to
multitask when
they needed to study (a cognitive need.)
But one of the key findings of the study is that this multitasking
didn't do a
very good job of satisfying their cognitive needs which actually
motivate the
multitasking in the first place, Wang said. That's probably because
their other
media use distracted them from the job of studying. However, the
students
reported that the multitasking was very good at meeting their
emotional needs
(fun/entertainment/relaxing) - interestingly, a need they weren't
even seeking
to fulfill.
In addition, the results showed that habits played an important role
in the use
of media multitasking.
"Our findings showed that habitual needs increase media multitasking
and are
also gratified from multitasking," she said.
This suggests that people get used to multitasking, which makes them
more likely
to continue.
"We found what we call a dynamical feedback loop. If you multitask
today, you're
likely to do so again tomorrow, further strengthening the behavior
over time,"
she said.
"This is worrisome because students begin to feel like they need to
have the TV
on or they need to continually check their text messages or computer
while they
do their homework. It's not helping them, but they get an emotional
reward that
keeps them doing it.
"It is critical that we carefully examine the long-term influence of
media
multitasking on how we perform on cognitive tasks."
Provided by The Ohio State University
"Multitasking may hurt your performance, but it makes you feel
better." April
30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-multitasking.html
.
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