Abstract
The current study investigates how volitional media multitasking affects working memory performance. Participants (N = 112) performed N-back working memory tasks of varying difficulty to determine if modulation of media multitasking was dependent on task demand. A 2 x 2 within-subject’s ANOVA tested the influence of task demand and the option to media multitask on performance. Performance was higher in the low-demand task (0-back) than the high-demand task (3-back). In the 0-back task only, performance was higher when there was no option to multitask (no video) than with the option to multitask (video option). Ralph et al.’s 2018 finding that participants multitasked more in a low-demand task was successfully replicated. While participants chose to multitask a high percentage of time (M = 79.95%, SD = 29.46%), they opted to multitask more when task demand decreased than when task demand was higher.