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The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing

Authors:

Danielle M. Lottridge,

Christine Rosakranse,

Catherine S. Oh,

Sean J. Westwood,

Katherine A. Baldoni,

Clifford I. NassAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 2967 - 2970

https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702367

Published: 18 April 2015 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Guo RLiu YLu HJing A(2023)Can you accurately monitor your behaviors while multitasking? The effect of multitasking on metacognitionPsychological Research10.1007/s00426-023-01875-z88:2(580-593)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01875-z
Unal DArrington CSolovey EWalker E(2023)Eliciting Proactive and Reactive Control During Use of an Interactive Learning EnvironmentArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_67(753-759)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_67
Lopez JOrr J(2022)Effects of media multitasking frequency on a novel volitional multitasking paradigmPeerJ10.7717/peerj.1260310(e12603)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12603
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Index Terms

The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2015

4290 pages

ISBN:9781450331456

DOI:10.1145/2702123

General Chairs:
Bo Begole
Huawei, USA
,
Jinwoo Kim
Yonsei University, Korea
,
Program Chairs:
Kori Inkpen
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Woontack Woo
KAIST, Korea

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 April 2015

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Funding Sources

Google Research Award (gift)

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CHI '15

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '15: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 18 - 23, 2015

Seoul, Republic of Korea

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CHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 486 of 2,120 submissions, 23%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Guo RLiu YLu HJing A(2023)Can you accurately monitor your behaviors while multitasking? The effect of multitasking on metacognitionPsychological Research10.1007/s00426-023-01875-z88:2(580-593)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01875-z
Unal DArrington CSolovey EWalker E(2023)Eliciting Proactive and Reactive Control During Use of an Interactive Learning EnvironmentArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_67(753-759)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_67
Lopez JOrr J(2022)Effects of media multitasking frequency on a novel volitional multitasking paradigmPeerJ10.7717/peerj.1260310(e12603)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12603
Karunaratne IAtukorale A(2021)Towards a Computerized Approach to Identify Attentional States of Online LearnersHCI International 2021 - Late Breaking Papers: Cognition, Inclusion, Learning, and Culture10.1007/978-3-030-90328-2_28(426-438)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90328-2_28
Lascau LGould SCox AKarmannaya EBrumby DBrewster SFitzpatrick GCox AKostakos V(2019)Monotasking or MultitaskingProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300649(1-14)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300649
Kobayashi YFujimoto YFujita K(2019)Development of E-mail Delivery Mediation System Based on Interruptibility and Its Evaluation in Daily Office Work ScenarioIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29286967(94084-94096)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2928696
Karunaratne I(2018)Harnessing learners' perceptual load, the attentional states, and interactions in digital learning environmentsProceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.202(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.202
Suh MBentley FLottridge D(2018)"It's Kind of Boring Looking at Just the Face"Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/32744362:CSCW(1-23)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274436
Rigby JBrumby DGould SCox ARedi JNiamut OBulterman Dvan den Broeck WDarnell MZimmermann R(2017)Media Multitasking at HomeProceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video10.1145/3077548.3077560(3-10)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3077548.3077560
Gorman TGreen C(2016)Short-term mindfulness intervention reduces the negative attentional effects associated with heavy media multitaskingScientific Reports10.1038/srep245426:1Online publication date: 18-Apr-2016
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep24542
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