Many everyday activities require coordination and monitoring of multiple deadlines. One way to handle these temporal demands might be to represent future goals and deadlines as a pattern of spatial relations. We examined the hypothesis that spatial ability, in addition to executive functioning, contributes to individual differences in multitasking. In two studies, participants completed a multi...

Traditionally viewed as a positive characteristic, there is mounting evidence that multitasking using digital devices can have a range of negative impacts on task performance and learning. While the cognitive processes that cause these impacts are starting to be understood and the evidence that they occur in real learning contexts is mounting, the mechanics and extent of students’ task switchin...

This paper explores and speculates on a new direction in human information behavior (HIB) research. We explore the nature of HIB as a multitasking activity, the interplay between information behavior and non-information behavior tasks, and the relation between multitasking information behavior to cognitive style and individual differences. A model of multitasking between information and non-inf...

Multitasking effect 2 Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate how multitasking interacts with levels of sexually explicit content to influence an individual's ability to recognize TV content. A 2 (multitasking vs. non-multitasking) by 3 (low, medium and high sexual content) between-subjects experiment was conducted. The analyses revealed that multitasking not only impaired task per...

CONTEXT To the authors' knowledge, few studies have investigated the relationship between electronic media multitasking by undergraduate and graduate students during lecture and their academic performance, and reports that have looked into this behavior have neglected to investigate factors that may influence students' multitasking during lecture. OBJECTIVE To determine the extent to which me...

Reports in public media suggest the existence of a stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men. The present online survey aimed at supporting this incidental observation by empirical data. For this, 488 participants from various ethnic backgrounds (US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and others) filled out a self-developed online-questionnaire. Results showed that overall mo...

This study conceptualizes multitasking in a tri-dimensional framework consisting of task, time and technology, and proposes an entropy measure called the Multitasking Entropy Index (MEI) to study multitasking behavior. Entropy indicates the level of disorder or heterogeneity in a system. In natural and social sciences, entropy measures have been used to study the dispersion of objects of intere...

Perhaps one of the most prevalent, yet least understood, forms of modern behavior is human multitasking aided by technology. Multitasking is both difficult to define and to measure. Based on Activity Theory and the concept of focus shifts, this study defines multitasking as shifts that occur when the flow of work is interrupted and tasks are interchanged during a session. The analysis of focus ...

In response to calls in the Information Systems literature to contextualize usage, we propose that measuring computer-based multitasking is essential to accurately describe and properly assess the manner in which people use Information Technology. To this end, we develop several multitasking metrics ranging from a very lean dichotomous variable to a very rich measure that combines user, task an...

Multitasking is held to be essential to corporate survival (Manhart, 2005), but little attention has been paid to the social meaning of technological multitasking. We focus on technological multitasking as rapid task switching involving information technologies and, in particular, where one or more activities involve interpersonal interaction. Understanding how technological multitasking behavi...