Distractor Filtering in Media Multitaskers

Abstract

A growing amount of modern media is consumed simultaneously, a phenomenon known as 'media multitasking'. Individuals who regularly engage in this activity, heavy media multitaskers (HMMs), are more affected by irrelevant information that can intrude into a primary task than are light media multitaskers (LMMs--Ophir et al, 2009 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 106 15583). However, the locus of this deficit is unknown, as previous research is consistent with both memory and attentional explanations. Here, we isolated attentional processes by employing a singleton distractor task with low working-memory demands. In this task, LMMs used top-down information to improve their performance, yet HMMs did not. This difference in performance in an established attentional capture task argues for the presence of attentional differences in HMMs and is consistent with the idea that HMMs maintain a wider attentional scope than LMMs, even when instructed otherwise.

Working memory, fluid intelligence, and impulsiveness in heavy media multitaskers

“…Cain and Mitroff (2011) also reported differences in attention, with HMMs attending to irrelevant information even in a situation where they could safely ignore it. One possible reason for the difference between our results and theirs may be in the structure of the tasks.…”

“…Ophir et al (2009) were the first to quantify media multitasking and based definitions of heavy and light on their own distribution of 262 scores using one SD above and below the mean, resulting in cutoff scores of 2.86 for LMMs and 5.9 for HMMs. Cain and Mitroff (2011) In our attempted conceptual replications, we used different tasks to measure the ability to inhibit distracting information and no longer relevant information in working memory. Had we found group differences, this would have strongly supported the original findings.…”

“…Thirtythree participants (10 males) with an MMI score greater than 5.36 were identified as HMMs, and 36 (15 males) participants were classified as LMMs, with MMIs less than 3.18. We used the same cutoffs reported by Cain and Mitroff (2011). The mean MMI score for the HMM group was 6.6, with an SD of 1.3, and the LMM group had a mean MMI score of 2.1, with an SD of 0.67.…”

“…Cain and Mitroff (2011) identified HMM and LMM individuals using the MMI and tested them on an additional singleton detection task. They found that HMMs appeared to take in more information from the environment than was necessary to perform the task, which suggests that HMMs may have a bias toward a broader focus of attention even when a narrower filter would improve performance.…”

Media multitasking in adolescence

“…with a number of undesirable characteristics in adults, such as a lesser ability to filter out distracting information (Cain & Mitroff, 2011;Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009; but see Minear, Brasher, McCurdy, Lewis, & Younggren, 2013), worse performance on fluid intelligence measures such as Raven's Progressive Matrices (Minear et al 2013), worse performance on demanding working memory tasks (Ophir et al 2009), worse performance on task switching (Ophir et al 2009; but see Becker, 2013, andMinear et al 2013, for conflicting results), and a tendency to use a split rather than unitary focus of attention (Yap & Lim, 2013). Additionally, heavy media multitasking has been associated with higher levels of impulsivity (Cain & Mitroff, 2016;Minear et al 2013), sensation seeking (Duff et al 2014;Kononova, 2013), attentional lapses, errors, and mind wandering (Ralph, Thomson, Cheyne, & Smilek, 2014), and even with depression and social anxiety (Becker, Alzahabi, & Hopwood, 2012).…”