The Impact of Media Multitasking on Executive Function in Chinese Adolescents: Evidence from Survey, Behavioral and fNIRS studies.

Abstract

Media multitasking, an increasingly common phenomenon among adolescents, has attracted growing research interests. This study aims to investigate the impact of media multitasking on executive function, using survey, behavioural measures, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The participants were 12 heavy/high media multitaskers (HMMs) (above the 75 percentile in their media multitasking score) (Mean = 16.07 years, SD = .83; 3 Males and 9 Females) and 10 light/low media multitaskers (LMMs) (below the 25 percentile in their media multitasking score) (Mean = 15.90 years, SD = 1.10; 3 Males and 7 Females) selected from a sample of 61 adolescents. They completed a self-reported questionnaire on executive function and three executive function cognitive tasks (i.e., 2-back, Color Stroop, and Number-letter Determination) while wearing fNIRS. The results indicated that: (1) there were no significant differences between the HMMs and LMMs in their performance on the cognitive tasks; (2) the questionnaire data showed that the HMMs were more impaired in executive function than the LMMs; and (3) the HMMs showed greater prefrontal activation during the 2-back and Color Stroop tasks than the LMMs. These results implied that the HMMs might have reduced effectiveness of the brain areas responsible for executive function, thus needed more brain activation to achieve the same level of cognitive tasks performance. Also, both the survey and the fNIRS findings showed that the HMMs had relatively poorer executive function than the HMMs. These findings from the study not only provide empirical evidence to support the possible negative impact of media multitasking on cognitive functions but also highlight the need to use multiple assessment methods in future studies to explore the impact of media multitasking on cognitive functions.