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Activities that require focused attention, such as reading, are declining among American youth, while activities that depend on multitasking, such as instant messaging (IMing), are increasing. We hypothesized that more time spent IMing would relate to greater difficulty in concentrating on less externally stimulating tasks (e.g., academic reading). As hypothesized, the amount of time that young people spent IMing was significantly related to higher ratings of distractibility for academic tasks, while amount of time spent reading books was negatively related to distractibility. The distracting nature and the context of IMing in this population are described.

Participating in a research activity by volunteering in a research study or by writing a short research paper as part of a course requirement relates to favorable perceptions of psychology and research, greater knowledge of procedures associated with participation, and other demographic and situational variables. College students who volunteered to participate in a research study were more satisfied with their experiences than those who wrote papers as part of their research activity. Gender, grade expected, employment status, major, class size, and number of participation events related to satisfaction with experiences and perceptions of psychology and research. The findings are relevant to academic departments implementing or evaluating the existence of a participant pool. Perceptions of Psychology and ResearchWe performed four one-way ANOVAs and post hoc LSD tests (if needed) to examine differences in perceptions of psy-

Anna Law is a Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research investigates the cognitive demands of multitasking performance, in particular the role of working memory. She also researches how media-multitasking behaviour relates to individual differences in executive function in both adults and children. Rosemary Stock is a Lecturer at the University of West London. Her research focuses on the predictors of student success in higher education. She also conducts research on reasoning and decision making, specifically how these processes are affected by individual differences and cognitive ageing. Abstract Research has demonstrated that learning is impaired if students multitask with media while encountering new information. However, some have gone further, and suggested that media-multitasking (as a general activity) may have a negative impact on cognitive control processes. If this were the case, students who are heavy media-multitaskers generally would have difficulties with goal-directed behaviour, and organising their time effectively to meet their learning goals. The study described here explored links between total levels of self-reported media-multitasking, academic achievement and approaches to learning. Well-established measures of media-multitasking and learning approach were given to 307 students. Total levels of media-multitasking did not relate to either learning approach or academic achievement. However, surface learning approach related negatively to academic achievement, and time spent engaging with printed media. Deep learning approach was positively related to time spent using printed media, email and other computer applications. These findings suggest that patterns of media use differ according to current learning approach, and that these patterns may be more relevant for learning than overall tendency to media-multitask.

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