Research On The Relationship Between Media Multitasking And Task Switching

With the development of social media,the increasing frequency of media multitasking in daily life is becoming a trend.The emergence of COVID-19 has gradually increased the proportion of online teaching,and also increased the possibility of students’ media multitasking behavior.Existing studies have shown that media multitasking has a negative impact on individuals’ cognitive ability,while other studies have proposed the opposite view.Such inconsistent results frequently appear in task-switching studies.Current studies mainly focus on the relationship between media multitasking and individuals’ forced task-switching ability.There are also a small number of studies involving predictable or voluntary task-switching.Most of these studies are conducted in isolation.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the relationship between media multitasking behavior and individual task switching ability under forced and voluntary switching conditions.In this study,the media multitasking questionnaire(MUQ)was used to measure the media use of college students,and the digital judgment task under the background of forced switching and voluntary switching was used,combined with ERP technology,to explore the characteristics of individuals with different media multitasking scores in each specific stage of task switching.The first experiment of this study explores the relationship between media multitasking and forced task switching.In this experiment,the subjects made parity judgment or magnitude judgment according to the type of task cue given in this trial.The behavioral results show that the reaction time of MMM is significantly longer than that of HMM and LMM.In the ERP results,the CNV and N2 components of MMM are significantly different from those of HMM and LMM,which induces more negative waves.For Target-P3,there is no significant difference in the repeat and switch of MMM,but there is significant difference in HMM and LMM.It shows that MMM,HMM and LMM differ mainly in anticipation and preparation,suppression of interference from unrelated task sets,and reaction execution.Compared with HMM and LMM,MMM exhibits a model that requires more active control and performs better in inhibition and response execution.The second experiment discusses the relationship between media multitasking and voluntary task switching.The same number judgment task was used as in experiment 1,but subjects were required to decide which task to perform in each trial by themselves according to the requirements of the instruction.Behavior results show that there was no significant difference between three groups in the reaction time,number of errors and voluntary switch quantity.ERP results showed that in Cue-P3,the latency of HMM was significantly later than that of LMM,reflecting that HMM was more delayed than LMM in receiving stimulus,making decision and updating task set.For N2 component,the amplitude of MMM is significantly lower than HMM and LMM,indicating that the ability of MMM to suppress unrelated task sets exists in both voluntary and forced switching.Conclusion: Compared with the individuals who rarely or frequently participate in media multitasking,the individuals who perform media multitasking properly have longer reaction time,stronger active control needs,better ability to suppress the interference of unrelated task sets,and lower switching cost during reaction execution.In the context of voluntary switching,Individuals with high media multitasking frequency were slower than those with low media frequency to receive cues,make decisions and update task sets.This study comprehensively explores the characteristics of media multitaskers in their specific psychological processes under different task-switching backgrounds,and provides behavioral and neural evidence for the research on the relationship between media multitasking and task-switching ability.