| The Internet penetration rate is gradually rising.As of December 2020,there are 989 million Internet users in China,and the Internet penetration rate has reached 70.4%.The largest group of Internet users is students,accounting for 21%,up to 208 million(CNNIC,2021).The increase in media use time has been accompanied by a more significant increase in media multitasking(using multiple forms of media at the same time)(Alzahabi&Becker,2013).Media multitasking refers to the simultaneous processing of two or more electronic or non-electronic media tasks(Ophir,Eyal,Nass,Clifford,Wagner,&Anthony,2009).Research shows that young people aged between 13 and 24 spend more than 7 hours a day using various media,of which nearly 2 hours is spent on media multitasking(Rideout,Foehr,&Roberts,2010).Existing studies have explored the impact from media multitasking on working memory and long-term memory(Minear,Brasher,McCurdy,Lewis,&Younggren,2013;Uncapher,Wagner,&Thieu,2016).As another important type of memory,Prospective memory(PM)is a memory of what is going to perform in the future,and it is thought to be incredibly important for our daily life.However,there is still a lack of research on whether and how media multitasking affects individuals’ PM,which deserves further discussion.Therefore,this study will combine three subexperiments to explore the influence of media multitasking on PM as well as its internal mechanism.Behavioral experment was used in the first study to clear the relationship between media multitasking and PM,and with the help of the eye movement technology,the second research explored the different processing mechanism between high and low media multitasking individual on PM task;In the last study,the questionnaire survey and behavior experiment were combined to mearsure the executive function and its intermediation between media multitasking and PM was test too.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The prospective memory’s ACC of the high media multitasker was significantly lower than that of the low media multitasker,indicating that heavy media multitasker may exhibit impaired prospective memory.(2)Heavy media multitasker tend to a breadth bias exploration mechanism in the process of prospective memory,which is easily disturbed by irrelevant distractors.However,the mild media multitasker tend to an inhibit control processing mechanism,which would reduce performance of PM due to their failure to suppress distractors in some difficult tasks with higher cognitive resource requirements.(3)Executive function(Scale Score)played a mediating role between media multitasking(MMI)and prospective memory(ACC),suggesting that media multitasking might affect the executive function in daily life and thus the performance of prospective memory.In short,this study inspcted the effect of media multitasking on prospective memory and its internal mechanism,which rich theory and view about prospective memory and media multitasking.Furthermore,the results can also provide a scientific evidence,be a certain extent,to the health of the youth network media use and their correction training. |
