The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing
529 views · Published 6 April 2015 · 0:30 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) · 2015 · Science & Technology
The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing Danielle M. Lottridge, Christine Rosakranse, Catherine S. Oh, Sean J. Westwood, Katherine A. Baldoni, Abrey S. Mann, Clifford I. Nass Abstract: Chronic multitaskers perform worse on core multitasking skills: memory management, cognitive filtering and task switching, likely due to their inability to filter irrelevant stimuli [17]. Our experiment examines effects of chronic multitasking with task-relevant and irrelevant distractors on analytical writing quality. We found a general switch cost and, when controlling for that cost, effects of chronic multitasking habits: heavy multitaskers write worse essays in the irrelevant condition and better essays in the relevant condition. Our study changes multitasking research paradigms in two fundamental ways: it studied a realistic writing scenario including access to both irrelevant and relevant distractors. We found that the effect of chronic multitasking is complex; heavy multitaskers are seduced by unrelated distractors but able to integrate multiple sources of relevant information. ACM DL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702367 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702367
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