Laura L. Bowman

Volunteering in Research: Student Satisfaction and Educational Benefits

Participating in a research activity by volunteering in a research study or by writing a short research paper as part of a course requirement relates to favorable perceptions of psychology and research, greater knowledge of procedures associated with participation, and other demographic and situational variables. College students who volunteered to participate in a research study were more satisfied with their experiences than those who wrote papers as part of their research activity. Gender, grade expected, employment status, major, class size, and number of participation events related to satisfaction with experiences and perceptions of psychology and research. The findings are relevant to academic departments implementing or evaluating the existence of a participant pool.

Mobile Media Use, Multitasking and Distractibility

Portable media devices are ubiquitous and their use has become a core component of many people’s daily experience, but to what effect? In this paper, the authors review research on the ways in which media use and multitasking relate to distraction, distractibility and impulsivity. They review recent research on the effects of media multitasking on driving, walking, work, and academic performance. The authors discuss earlier research concerning the nature of media’s impact on attention and review cognitive and neuropsychological findings on the effects of divided attention. Research provides clear evidence that mobile media use is distracting, with consequences for safety, efficiency and learning. Greater use of media is correlated with higher levels of trait impulsivity and distractibility, but the direction of causality has not been established. Individuals may become more skilled at media multitasking over time, but intervention is currently required to improve the safe and effective use of mobile media.

Off-task multitasking, note-taking and lower- and higher-order classroom learning

Abstract We examined whether multitasking via concurrent off-task text messaging during an academic presentation impacted students’ performance on tests assessing lower-order and higher-order learning. College students (N = 183) were assigned to one of two conditions involving either concurrent texting or not texting during an academic presentation, or to a no presentation condition. Students in presentation conditions were encouraged to take hand-written notes. Between-participants analyses revealed that students who saw the presentation performed better on learning measures than the control group who did not see the presentation, indicating that students did learn from the presentations. Non-texters scored significantly higher than texters on multiple choice tests of factual, lower-order information (e.g., knowledge, comprehension), but not on essays requiring higher-order application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information. Within-participants analyses demonstrated that texters performed more poorly on lower-order questions that were based on information presented at times when they were texting. Non-texters took more quality notes than texters; amount of quality notes was positively related to test scores of all types. The amount of quality notes taken partially mediated the relationship between texting condition and multiple choice test scores. It appears that multitasking with media devices during an academic presentation interferes with note-taking and the encoding of information specific to the presentation.