Situational Factors Competing for Attention

Abstract

This study investigates how multitasking interacts with levels of sexually explicit content to influence an individual’s ability to recognize TV content. A 2 (multitasking vs. nonmultitasking) by 3 (low, medium, and high sexual content) between-subjects experiment was conducted. The analyses revealed that multitasking not only impaired task performance, but also decreased TV recognition. An inverted-U relationship between degree of sexually explicit content and recognition of TV content was found, but only when subjects were multitasking. In addition, multitasking interfered with subjects’ ability to recognize audio information more than their ability to recognize visual information.

Effects of media multi-tasking with Facebook on the enjoyment and encoding of TV episodes

“…Some, however, have found that watching TV programs as a secondary task negatively affects memory and comprehension for what is read in news stories (Armstrong, Boiarsky, & Mares, 1991;Zhang, Jeong, & Fishbein, 2010). The reason for this is that people have a limited cognitive capacity to process information, and demands can exceed available resources when people try to process additional information other than that demanded by the primary task (Junco, 2012;Mayer & Moreno, 2003).…”

The Impact of Media Multitasking on the Cognitive and Attitudinal Responses to Television Commercials: The Moderating Role of Type of Advertising Appeal

“…Due to task interference, rapid switching among complex media contentwhether passive or interactive in nature-has negative implications for the cognitive processing of that content. For example, Pool, Koolstra, and van der Voort (2003) showed that watching television while doing homework decreases performance, while Zhang, Jeong, and Fishbein (2010) showed that the recognition of television content suffers when combined with reading. Similar or even worse effects can be expected when multitasking with different media because the amount of information and visual and auditory stimuli encountered is often enormous (Srivastava 2013).…”

Multitasking With Television Among Adolescents

“…To learn from TV content, viewers must devote sufficient cognitive resources to processing it; devoting insufficient resources reduces one’s likelihood of learning (Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, 1999). Multitasking reduces the cognitive resources available for TV content, thereby decreasing the likelihood that viewers will learn from TV (Jeong & Hwang, 2012; Pezdek & Hartman, 1983; Zhang et al, 2010; Zhang et al, 2006). Like prior research involving the limited capacity model (e.g., Lang et al, 1999; Lang, Geiger, Strickwerda, & Sumner, 1993; Lang, Potter, & Grabe, 2010), the present study aims to identify characteristics that predict viewers’ allocation of cognitive resources to TV.…”

“…The limited capacity model suggests that, compared with full attention, multitasking increases cognitive load and decreases TV-processing capacity (Lang, 2000). Indeed, multitasking has been found to decrease memory (Pezdek & Hartman, 1983; Zhang et al, 2010) and comprehension of TV content (Zhang, et al, 2006). Demographic characteristics explain about one quarter of the variance in young people’s media multitasking tendencies (Foehr, 2006).…”

“…Multitasking may inhibit their memory and comprehension of TV content (Jeong & Hwang, 2012; Pezdek & Hartman, 1983; Zhang, Jeong, & Fishbein, 2010; Zhang, Jeong, & Fishbein, 2006), thereby altering TV’s behavioral or health effects. For example, adolescents who focus on other stimuli while watching TV have lower body mass indices, perhaps because multitasking inhibits their processing of TV food advertisements (Bickham, Blood, Walls, Shrier, & Rich, 2013).…”