It has often been shown that the amount of media use is negatively related to cognitive outcomes. The more time spent on media the poorer cognitive performance is. This association has mainly been found for general-audience, violent, and action-loaded contents but not for educational contents. Typically, long-term-explanations like the time-displacement hypothesis are considered to account for this relation, although this cannot fully explain the association. Additionally short-term explanations should be considered, since it can be expected that media-induced stress can impair information processing. The present study compares short-term effects regarding memory performance and the ability to concentrate, using four different experimental conditions (high- vs. low-arousing films and video games). It was also examined if the experienced level of stress mediates group differences and if habitual media, habitual use of age-restricted contents or the trait sensation seeking moderate this mediation. Participants consisted of N = 117 university students. They were asked to learn written items before media use and to recall these after having used the media. Further, the ability to concentrate was measured. Experimental groups differed with regard to the cognitive outcome measures after media use. A significant univariate difference was found for high- vs. low-arousing contents in general (independent of type of media), the high-arousing content leading to poorer ability to concentrate after media use. The expected mediating and moderating effects are not supported. The study yields evidence that short-term mechanisms might play a role in explaining the negative correlations between media use and cognitive performance.

The present study focuses on the short-term effects of electronic entertainment media on memory and learning processes. It compares the effects of violent versus nonviolent computer game content in a condition of playing and in another condition of watching the same game. The participants consisted of 83 female and 94 male adolescents with a mean age of 17.6 years. The dependent variables are memory for previously learnt verbal and visual material, memory for media-related content and physiological measures of stress (heart rate, cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase). Besides the group comparisons, potential mediation effects and gender differences were examined. The results show that violent content leads to a poorer memory performance for verbal material and to an increased heart rate. The heart rate, however, does not mediate the effect on memory performance. Genders differ regarding their abilities to memorise verbal and visual material, with females showing a better performance (independent of the experimental condition), and for memorising media-contents, where the males outperform females (also independent of experimental condition). The study supports the assumption that violent and arousing media content has a negative short-term effect on simultaneous information processing and learning and that there are gender-specific media effects.

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Zusammenfassung. Berichtet wird über eine Studie zur Evaluation eines Stresspräventionstrainings für Jugendliche der Klassenstufen 8 und 9. Das Training basiert auf dem Problemlöseansatz und wurde auf der Basis mehrerer vorausgehender Studien entwickelt. Es besteht aus acht Trainingssitzungen mit einer Dauer von jeweils 90 Minuten im wöchentlichen Abstand sowie einer begleitenden E-learning-Plattform. An der Studie nahmen insgesamt 372 Schüler teil, von denen 182 die Trainingsgruppe und 190 die Kontrollgruppe bildeten. Als Evaluationskriterien wurden Veränderungen (a) des Wissens über Stress und Stressbewältigung, (b) des Stresserlebens bzw. der Stressvulnerabilität, (c) der Stresssymptomatik sowie (d) der Selbstwirksamkeit berücksichtigt. Weiterhin wurden Fragen zur Trainingsbewertung durch die Schüler gestellt. Die Erhebung der Evaluationskriterien fand eine Woche vor und eine Woche sowie zwei Monate nach dem Training statt. Als Ergebnisse zeigten sich deutliche Wissenszunahmen, deutliche Zunahmen des Selbstwirksamkeitserlebens sowie Reduktionen der Stresssymptomatik. Das Training wird überwiegend positiv bewertet, wobei sich Bezüge zwischen der Trainingsbewertung und den Trainingseffekten ergaben. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden mögliche Maßnahmen diskutiert, die zu einer noch weiter reichenden Steigerung der Trainingseffektivität beitragen können.

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