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Real-World Media Multitasking Shows Few Effects on Lab-Based Volitional Multitasking Performance

Media multitasking (e.g., listening to podcasts while studying) has been linked to decreased executive functioning. However, the tasks used to establish this finding do not approximate a real-world volitional multitasking environment. A novel experimental framework was designed to mimic a desktop computer environment where a “popup” associated with a secondary task would occasionally appear. Participants could select the popup and perform a difficult word stem completion trial or ignore the popup and continue performing the primary task which consisted of math problems. We predicted that individuals who are more impulsive, more frequent media multitaskers, and individuals who prefer to multitask(quantified with self-report questionnaires) would be more distracted by the popups, choose to perform the secondary task more often, and be slower to return to the primary task compared to those who media multitask to a lesser degree. We found that as individuals media multitask to a greater extent, they are slower to return to the previous (primary) task set and are slower to complete the primary task overall whether a popup was present or not, among other task performance measures. Our findings suggest that overall, more frequent media multitaskers show a marginal decrease in task performance, including an increased return cost, but those who prefer to multitask show the opposite pattern of effects with some performance measures. Impulsivity was not found to influence any task performance measures. Further iterations of this paradigm are necessary to elucidate the relationship between media multitasking and task performance, if one exists.