Active vs passive media multitasking and memory for lecture materials.

Access to digital technology in the 21st century has led to the emergence of media multitasking (MMT), which involves attempting to engage with multiple streams of media at the same time. This behaviour, which is frequently considered to be a form of inattention, has become increasingly prevalent in educational settings, such as undergraduate lectures. The aim of the present study was to examine volitional media-multitasking (MMT) during an asynchronous online lecture by giving participants the opportunity to engage with a secondary, non-required media stream (i.e., the game of snake). Participants (n = 222) were randomly assigned to either an Active condition, in which they could play the snake game using the arrow keys; or a Passive condition, in which they could watch the snake game, but could not play it. In both conditions, participants could toggle the snake game on and off, using a keypress. MMT was indexed behaviourally by measuring the percentage of time participants had the secondary stream toggled on (i.e., snake time percentage), a method pioneered by Ralph et al. (2020), and subjectively by asking participants to what extent they engaged with other media while the lecture was playing. Following the lecture, participants completed a multiple-choice quiz and self-reported their level of MMT. Our behavioural measure (i.e., snake time percentage) indicated that participants spent significantly more time MMT in the Active condition than the Passive condition. However, there were no significant differences in self-reported MMT or quiz performance across conditions. Furthermore, correlations between both measures of MMT and quiz performance were non-significant. Thus, the present study found no performance decrement as a result of, or in association with, increased volitional MMT.

On the relation between oral contraceptive use and self-control.

In two studies we examined the relation between oral contraceptive (OC) use and self-reported levels of self-control in undergraduate women using OCs (Study 1: OC group N = 399, Study 2: OC group N = 288) and naturally cycling women not using any form of hormonal contraceptives (Study 1: Non-OC group N = 964, Study 2: Non-OC group N = 997). We assessed the self-overriding aspect of self-control using the Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS) and strategies for self-regulation using the Regulatory Mode Scale (RMS), which separately measures the tendency to assess one's progress towards a goal (assessment), and the tendency to engage in activities that move one towards an end goal (locomotion). In Study 1, we found no significant differences between OC and non-OC groups in their levels of self-overriding or self-regulatory assessment. However, we found that those in the OC group reported significantly greater levels of self-regulatory locomotion compared to those in the non-OC group, even after controlling for depression symptoms and the semester of data collection. The findings from Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1 in a different sample of participants, with the exception that OC use was also related to higher levels of assessment in Study 2. These results indicate that OC use is related to increases in self-regulatory actions in service of goal pursuit and perhaps the tendency to evaluate progress towards goals.

Comparing attentional disengagement between Prolific and MTurk samples.

Attention often disengages from primary tasks in favor of secondary tasks (i.e., multitasking) and task-unrelated thoughts (i.e., mind wandering). We assessed whether attentional disengagement, in the context of a cognitive task, can substantially differ between samples from commonly used online participant recruitment platforms, Prolific and Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Initially, eighty participants were recruited through Prolific to perform an attention task in which the risk of losing points for errors was varied (high risk = 80% chance of loss, low risk = 20% chance of loss). Attentional disengagement was measured via task performance along with self-reported mind wandering and multitasking. On Prolific, we observed surprisingly low levels of disengagement. We then conducted the same experiment on MTurk. Strikingly, MTurk participants exhibited more disengagement than Prolific participants. There was also an interaction between risk and platform, with the high-risk group exhibiting less disengagement, in terms of better task performance, than the low-risk group, but only on MTurk. Platform differences in individual traits related to disengagement and relations among study variables were also observed. Platform differences persisted, but were smaller, after increasing MTurk reputation criteria and remuneration in a second experiment. Therefore, recruitment platform and recruitment criteria could impact results related to attentional disengagement.

Attention in hindsight: Using stimulated recall to capture dynamic fluctuations in attentional engagement.

Attentional engagement is known to vary on a moment-to-moment basis. However, few self-report methods can effectively capture dynamic fluctuations in attentional engagement over time. In the current paper, we evaluated the utility of stimulated recall, a method wherein individuals are asked to remember their subjective states while using a mnemonic cue, for the measurement of temporal changes in attentional engagement. Participants were asked to watch a video lecture, during which we assessed their in-the-moment levels of attentional engagement using intermittent thought probes. Then, we used stimulated recall by cueing participants with short video clips from the lecture to retrospectively assess the levels of attentional engagement they had experienced when they first watched those clips within the lecture. Experiment 1 assessed the statistical overlap between in-the-moment and video-stimulated ratings. Experiment 2 assessed the generalizability of video-stimulated recall across different types of lectures. Experiment 3 assessed the impact of presenting video-stimulated probe clips in non-chronological order. Experiment 4 assessed the effect of video-stimulated recall on its own. Across all experiments, we found statistically robust correspondence between in-the-moment and video-stimulated ratings of attentional engagement, illustrating a strong convergence between these two methods of assessment. Taken together, our findings indicate that stimulated recall provides a new and practical methodological approach that can accurately capture dynamic fluctuations in subjective attentional states over time.

Examining the relation between oral contraceptive use and attentional engagement in everyday life.

Oral contraceptives (OCs) used by women worldwide include artificial estradiol and progesterone, which can attach to receptors in the brain and potentially influence cognition. In the present studies, we examined the relation between OC use and self-reported everyday attention. We collected trait-level measures of mind wandering, attention-related errors, and attention lapses in undergraduate women using OCs (Study 1: OC group N = 471, Study 2: OC group N = 246) and naturally cycling women not using any form of hormonal contraceptives (Study 1: Non-OC group N = 1,330, Study 2: Non-OC group N = 929). In Study 1, we found that women using OCs reported significantly less spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering than naturally cycling women and no differences between groups on attention-related errors and attention lapses. In Study 2, our findings indicated no significant differences between groups on any of our attention measures. Regression analyses controlling for depression symptoms and semester of data collection found that OC use did predict unique additional variance on some attention measures, but these effects were small and unreliable across the two studies. Taken together, our data suggests there is little evidence that OC use is related to differences in attentional engagement in everyday life.

The effects of self-selected background music and task difficulty on task engagement and performance in a visual vigilance task.

Listening to self-selected background music has been shown to be associated with increased task focus and decreased mind wandering during a sustained attention task (Kiss and Linnell, Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung 85:2313-2325, 2021). It is unclear, however, how this relation may depend on the potentially critical factor of task difficulty. To address this knowledge gap, we explored how listening to self-selected music, compared to silence, affects subjectively experienced task engagement (i.e., task focus, mind wandering, and external distraction/bodily sensation states) and task performance during either an easy or a hard vigilance task. We also examined how these effects vary with time-on-task. Our results replicated prior work demonstrating that background music enhanced task focus and decreased mind wandering, compared to silence. There was also lower reaction time variability in the background music condition relative to the silence condition. Notably, these findings held regardless of task difficulty. Interestingly, when examined over time-on-task, the presence of music led to smaller task focus declines and mind wandering increases, compared to silence. Thus, listening to self-selected music appears to confer a protective effect on task engagement, especially over time-on-task.

The relation between trait flow and engagement, understanding, and grades in undergraduate lectures.

BACKGROUND: Much work has focused on inattention in the classroom, examining how episodes of task-unrelated thought (i.e., mind wandering) and engagement with various forms of media (e.g., media multitasking, smartphone use) influence retention of lecture material. However, considerably less work has examined factors that may positively influence attentiveness in lectures. AIMS: We aimed to explore whether the trait-level tendency to experience 'flow'-defined here as the subjective experience of deep and effortless concentration-is related to in-class reports of engagement and understanding during undergraduate lectures, as well as academic performance. SAMPLE: Participants were undergraduate students in Psychology at a University in Ontario, Canada. METHODS: We measured trait flow (i.e., deep, effortless concentration) at the beginning of each semester, and assessed engagement and understanding during lectures via experience sampling probes throughout two semesters in several university courses. Experience sampling probes were presented intermittently using a laptop application. We also measured students' trait mind wandering and grit, and collected students' course grades. RESULTS: The general tendency to experience deep, effortless concentration predicted engagement and understanding in lectures throughout the term, as well as final course grades, over and above students' grittiness and tendency to mind wander. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the everyday tendency to experience flow extends to a classroom environment and has implications for academic success.

A desire for distraction: uncovering the rates of media multitasking during online research studies.

Interpretations of task performance in many cognitive studies rest on the assumption that participants are fully attentive to the tasks they agree to complete. However, with research studies being increasingly conducted online where monitoring participant engagement is difficult, this assumption may be inaccurate. If participants were found to be engaging in off-task behaviours while participating in these studies, the interpretation of study results might be called into question. To investigate this issue, we conducted a secondary data analysis across nearly 3000 participants in various online studies to examine the prevalence of one form of off-task behaviour: media multitasking. Rates of media multitasking were found to be high, averaging 38% and ranging from 9 to 85% across studies. Our findings broadly raise questions about the interpretability of results from online studies and urge researchers to consider the likelihood that participants are simultaneously engaging in off-task behaviours while completing online research tasks.

Does framing an assignment as involving one or multiple components influence subjective experiences of attentional engagement?

Across two studies, we explored whether framing an assignment as involving either multitasking or single-tasking (Srna et al. Psychol Sci 29(12):1942-1955, 2018) leads to differences in both subjective ratings of attentional engagement (i.e., depth of concentration and attentional control) and performance during the assignment. In Experiment 1, we manipulated task framing in the context of an assignment in which participants (Ncollected = 238) simultaneously completed a word-search and an anagram task (Srna et al. Psychol Sci 29(12):1942-1955, 2018). While we replicated prior findings that participants who receive multitasking instructions perform better than those who receive single-tasking instructions, we did not find any influence of task framing on participants' subjective evaluations of their attentional engagement. Exploratory analyses, however, revealed that regardless of group assignment, those who believed they were multitasking reported greater levels of attentional engagement than those who believed they were single-tasking. In Experiment 2 (Ncollected = 238), task framing was varied in the context of the 2-back task (Kirchner J Exp Psychol 55(4): 352, 1958). Unexpectedly, we found that, relative to participants who received single-tasking instructions, those who received multitasking instructions reported exerting less attentional control over their thoughts and showed a greater number of incorrect responses to non-target trials on the 2-back. Taken together, the results do not support a straightforward conclusion regarding the influence of task framing on either subjective reports of attentional engagement or task performance. Nevertheless, they provide insight into our understanding of the role of task framing in contexts ranging from commonly performed real-world tasks to typical laboratory tasks.

The uncertain advisor: trust, accuracy, and self-correction in an automated decision support system.

The increasing use of automated systems to support human decision-making is a development that has practical implications across multiple domains, and the dynamics of trust formation in an autonomous system is a critical element in the success of the human-automation team. Here, we employ existing models of human-automation trust to narrow our scope to address, specifically, the concept of dynamically learned trust. In the present experiments we explored how trust in an autonomous system is influenced by variations in system speed, system accuracy, and a novel operationalization of system uncertainty, in which the automated system corrects itself mid-response. Participants monitored the performance of an automated 'Captcha'-like decision support system, and were tasked with indicating whether the system was correct or incorrect on each trial. Dependent variables included subjective trust ratings, response times, hit rates, and false alarm rates. In addition to validating our methodology for quantifying the impact of low-level system design features, we further demonstrate that participants are more likely to miss system errors when they have high trust in a system, and that the speed and level of self-correction with which an automated system produces responses has an impact on human trust in that system.

The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences: One year later.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: We examined students perceived changes in their attention, motivation, affect, and time perception following the implementation of the pandemic-related restrictions. METHODS: One year after the restrictions were implemented, we surveyed students' (N = 153) perceived changes in their experiences relative to their remembered pre- and early-pandemic ones, as well as their predicted future changes. RESULTS: Consistent with prior work, when students compared their current experiences (March/April 2021) to their remembered pre-pandemic ones, they perceived increases in mind-wandering, technology use, external distraction, and negative affect, as well as decreases in focus, flow, motivation, and time perception. Although somewhat attenuated, students also noted changes in these behaviours when comparing the memory of their early pandemic experiences to their current experiences. Finally, they further anticipated negative changes in their future experiences, possibly due to continued pandemic-related isolation. IMPLICATIONS: Reducing students' sense of isolation might improve their cognitive and affective experiences.

Avoidance of mild threat observed in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using eye tracking.

Attentional biases towards threat are assumed to be a causal factor in the development of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, findings have been inconsistent, and studies often examine single time-point bias during threat exposure, instead of across time. Attention to threat may shift throughout exposure (e.g., from initial engagement to avoidance), and research suggests that threat intensity and state anxiety influence attentional biases. No studies to our knowledge have examined biases across time and with varying threat intensity and state anxiety. Participants with GAD (n=38) and non-anxious controls (n=25) viewed emotional (high threat, mild threat, and positive) and neutral image pairs under calm and anxious mood states while their eye movements were tracked. Participants showed an initial orientation to emotional images, and, under the anxious mood induction, demonstrated a bias towards threatening images at first fixation and over time. Results suggest it may be normative to attend to threat cues over other stimuli while in an anxious state. Individuals with GAD uniquely showed a bias away from mild (but not high) threat images over time relative to controls. Implications for theories of attentional biases to threat and clinical implications for GAD and anxiety disorders broadly are discussed.

Boredom and Media Multitasking.

Media multitasking entails simultaneously engaging in multiple tasks when at least one of the tasks involves media (e.g., online activities and streaming videos). Across two studies, we investigated one potential trigger of media multitasking, state boredom, and its relation to media multitasking. To this end, we manipulated participants' levels of state boredom using video mood inductions prior to administering an attention-demanding 2-back task during which participants could media multitask by playing a task-irrelevant video. We also examined whether trait boredom proneness was associated media multitasking. We found no direct evidence that state boredom leads to media multitasking. However, trait boredom proneness correlated with greater amounts of media multitasking in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. Surprisingly, in both experiments, post-task ratings of state boredom were equivalent across conditions, alerting us to the short-lived effects of video mood inductions and the boring nature of cognitive tasks.

The Influence of Posture on Attention.

Smith et al. (2019) found standing resulted in better performance than sitting in three different cognitive control paradigms: a Stroop task, a task-switching, and a visual search paradigm. Here, we conducted close replications of the authors' three experiments using larger sample sizes than the original work. Our sample sizes had essentially perfect power to detect the key postural effects reported by Smith et al. The results from our experiments revealed that, in contrast to Smith et al., the postural interactions were quite limited in magnitude in addition to being only a fraction of the size of the original effects. Moreover, our results from Experiment 1 are consistent with two recent replications (Caron et al., 2020; Straub et al., 2022), which reported no meaningful influences of posture on the Stroop effect. In all, the current research provides further converging evidence that postural influences on cognition do not appear to be as robust, as was initially reported in prior work.

Re-examining the effect of motivation on intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought: accounting for thought constraint produces novel results.

It has been proposed that motivating participants to perform well on a cognitive task ought to lead to decreases in rates of intentional, but not unintentional, task-unrelated thought (TUT; a commonly studied variety of mind wandering). However, at odds with this prediction, research has found that increasing motivation results in decreases in both intentional and unintentional TUTs. One possible explanation for this surprising finding is that standard assessments of TUT may inadvertently conflate TUTs with another variety of mind wandering: unconstrained thought. If so, then deconfounding task-unrelated and unconstrained varieties of mind wandering might produce the predicted effect of a decrease in intentional, but not unintentional, TUT when motivation is increased. To explore this possibility, in the present study, participants completed a sustained-attention task after receiving standard instructions (normal-motivation condition) or instructions informing them that they could leave the study early if they achieved a certain level of performance (motivated condition). Throughout the task, we assessed rates of TUT (both intentional and unintentional) and unconstrained thoughts. Consistent with prior work, the results indicated that motivated participants reported being on-task significantly more frequently than non-motivated participants. However, unlike previous work, we found that when deconfounding TUTs and unconstrained thoughts, participants in the motivation condition reported significantly fewer bouts of intentional TUT than those in the non-motivation condition, but no differences in rates of unintentional TUT were observed between groups. These results suggest that (a) motivation specifically targets intentional TUT and (b) standard assessments of TUT conflate task-relatedness and thought constraint.

Contrasting Mind-Wandering, (Dark) Flow, and Affect During Multiline and Single-Line Slot Machine Play.

Slot machines are a very popular form of gambling in which a small proportion of gamblers experience gambling-related problems. These players refer to a trance-like state that researchers have labelled 'dark flow'-a pleasurable, but maladaptive state where players become completely occupied by the game. We assessed 110 gamblers for mindfulness (using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale), gambling problems (using the Problem Gambling Severity Index), depressive symptoms (using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale), and boredom proneness (using the Boredom Proneness Scale). Participants played both a multiline and single-line slot machine simulator and were occasionally interrupted with thought probes to assess whether they were thinking about the game or something else. After playing each game, we retrospectively assessed dark flow and affect during play. Our key results were that the number of "on-game" reports during the multiline game were significantly higher than the single-line game, and that we found significantly greater flow during the multiline game than the single-line game. We also found significantly lower negative affect during the multiline game than the single-line game. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that dark flow accounted for unique variance when predicting problem gambling severity (over and above depression, mindfulness, and boredom proneness). These assessments help bolster our previous assertions about escape gambling-if some players are prone to having their mind-wander to negative places, the frequent but unpredictable reinforcement of multiline slot machines may help rein in the wandering mind and prevent minds from unintentionally wandering to negative thoughts.

Attention spreads between students in a learning environment.

We propose a novel phenomenon, attention contagion, defined as the spread of attentive (or inattentive) states among members of a group. We examined attention contagion in a learning environment in which pairs of undergraduate students watched a lecture video. Each pair consisted of a participant and a confederate trained to exhibit attentive behaviors (e.g., leaning forward) or inattentive behaviors (e.g., slouching). In Experiment 1, confederates sat in front of participants and could be seen. Relative to participants who watched the lecture with an inattentive confederate, participants with an attentive confederate: (a) self-reported higher levels of attentiveness, (b) behaved more attentively (e.g., took more notes), and (c) had better memory for lecture content. In Experiment 2, confederates sat behind participants. Despite confederates not being visible, participants were still aware of whether confederates were acting attentively or inattentively, and participants were still susceptible to attention contagion. Our findings suggest that distraction is one factor that contributes to the spread of inattentiveness (Experiment 1), but this phenomenon apparently can still occur in the absence of distraction (Experiment 2). We propose an account of how (in)attentiveness spreads across students and discuss practical implications regarding how learning is affected in the classroom. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The relation between task-unrelated media multitasking and task-related motivation.

In two experiments, we explored the relation between participants' (a) levels of motivation to complete a task and (b) task-unrelated media multitasking. In Experiment 1, we examined the extent to which participants' levels of motivation to complete a task influenced their tendency to engage in task-unrelated media multitasking. Participants completed a 1-back task, while having the opportunity to turn on and off an unrelated, optional video. Results showed that participants who were told they would finish the experiment early if they achieved a sufficient level of performance (the motivated group) were significantly less likely to play the optional video during the 1-back task than those who were not given the opportunity to finish early (control condition). In Experiment 2, we examined the extent to which engaging in task-unrelated media multitasking affected task-related motivation. Three groups of participants completed a 1-back task, while (a) no video was presented, (b) a video was continuously played, or (c) participants could turn on and off a video at their leisure (as in Experiment 1). At both the beginning and the end of Experiment 2, participants were asked to indicate their level of motivation to complete the task. Interestingly, results revealed that continuously having the video playing helped sustain task-related motivation. Thus, although greater motivation to perform a task reduces the likelihood of engaging in task-unrelated media multitasking, such media multitasking also appears to increase levels of motivation.

Dissociating the freely-moving thought dimension of mind-wandering from the intentionality and task-unrelated thought dimensions.

The recently forwarded family-resemblances framework of mind-wandering argues that mind-wandering is a multidimensional construct consisting of a variety of exemplars. On this view, membership in the mind-wandering family is graded along various dimensions that define more or less prototypical instances of mind-wandering. In recent work, three dimensions that have played a prominent role in defining prototypicality within the mind-wandering family include: (a) task-relatedness (i.e., how related the content of a thought is to an ongoing task), (b) intentionality (i.e., whether thought is deliberately or spontaneously engaged), and (c) thought constraint (i.e., how much attention constrains thought dynamics). One concern, however, is that these dimensions may be redundant with each other. The utility of distinguishing among these different dimensions of mind-wandering rests upon a demonstration that they are dissociable. To shed light on this issue, we indexed the task-relatedness, intentionality, and constraint dimensions of thought during the completion of a laboratory task to evaluate how these dimensions relate to each other. We found that 56% of unconstrained thoughts were "on-task" and that 23% of constrained thoughts were "off-task." Moreover, we found that rates of off-task thought, but not "freely-moving" (i.e., unconstrained) thought, varied as a function of expected changes in task demands, confirming that task-relatedness and thought constraint are separable dimensions. Participants also reported 21% of intentional off-task thoughts that were freely moving and 9% of unintentional off-task thoughts that were constrained. Finally, off-task thoughts were more likely to be freely-moving than unintentional. Taken together, the results suggest that these three dimensions of mind-wandering are not redundant with one another.