Does Media Use Have a Short-Term Impact on Cognitive Performance?

Abstract

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 Relationship Between Media Multitasking Behavior and Executive Function in Adolescence: A Replication Study

“…Specifically, this might translate into EF difficulties, poor academic performance, and other adaptive problems in this younger, more vulnerable group (Carr, 2010;Gardner & Davis, 2013). As will be illustrated further, studies that target media-related behaviors in both adult and younger samples show that, indeed, MU and MM are associated with both short-term (e.g., Lillard, Drell, Richey, Boguszewski, & Smith, 2015;Maass, Klöpper, Michel, & Lohaus, 2011) and longitudinal effects on cognition (e.g., Baumgartner, van der Schuur, Lemmens, & te Poel, 2017) and changes in brain structure (e.g., Hutton, Dudley, Horowitz-Kraus, DeWitt, & Holland, 2020).…”

“…Experimental studies that targeted short-term effects of MU on EF show that children have a lower performance on WM tasks immediately after being exposed to fantastical media content, as opposed to more realistic programs (Lillard et al, 2015). Young adults also show a diminished capacity to concentrate after watching high-arousing (vs. slow) media contents (Maass et al, 2011). These results indicate that MU involving complex, dynamic contents induces immediate changes in cognitive functioning not only in young children, who are crossing a time of increased neural development and plasticity (Poole, Nunez, & Warren, 2007) but also in adults, whose neural systems have already reached maturity (Poole et al, 2007).…”

The Cognitive Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Members of the General Population in Italy: A Preliminary Study on Executive Inhibition

“…Additionally, the pervasiveness and overexposure to pandemic information (e.g., media, social networks, etc.) could affect cognitive functions [ 22 ].…”

The Short-Term Impact of Animation on the Executive Function of Children Aged 4 to 7

“…In addition, it is difficult to conduct a long-term study on the TV-EF causal relationship because teachers or parents are unlikely to randomly assign their children to watch TV over an extended period of time. Another way to test causal effect is to test the short-term effect of TV on EF [26]; considering that repeated short-term influences might lead to a long-term effect [24]. Some researchers have begun to use experimental methods to explore the short-term effect of TV on EF [14,27,28].…”