title: Media multitasking is associated with distractibility and increased prefrontal activity in adolescents and young adults.
abstract: The current generation of young people indulges in more media multitasking behavior (e.g., instant messaging while watching videos) in their everyday lives than older generations. Concerns have been raised about how this might affect their attentional functioning, as previous studies have indicated that extensive media multitasking in everyday life may be associated with decreased attentional control. In the current study, 149 adolescents and young adults (aged 13-24years) performed speech-listening and reading tasks that required maintaining attention in the presence of distractor stimuli in the other modality or dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. Brain activity during task performance was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We studied the relationship between self-reported daily media multitasking (MMT), task performance and brain activity during task performance. The results showed that in the presence of distractor stimuli, a higher MMT score was associated with worse performance and increased brain activity in right prefrontal regions. The level of performance during divided attention did not depend on MMT. This suggests that daily media multitasking is associated with behavioral distractibility and increased recruitment of brain areas involved in attentional and inhibitory control, and that media multitasking in everyday life does not translate to performance benefits in multitasking in laboratory settings.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland; Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland. Electronic address: mona.moisala@helsinki.fi.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moisala
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Salmela
authors.affiliation: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hietajärvi
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Salo
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Finland; Neuroscience Unit, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.affiliation: Helsinki Medical Imaging Center, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Salonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lonka
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hakkarainen
authors.affiliation: Cicero Learning, University of Helsinki, Finland; Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; School of Education, University of California Irvine, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Salmela-Aro
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, FI-00076, Aalto, Finland; Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Alho
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019212:Multimedia; D000073456:Multitasking Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Media multitasking; Prefrontal cortex; fMRI