Share Paper: Human multitasking abilities: Learning tasks vs. performance tasks
Thursday, March 5 11:15 AM-12:15 PM Meeting Room 9
Abstract: This study examines the relationship between people’s familiarity with tasks at hand and their abilities to multitask. A quantitative study with 80 undergraduate students is conducted to investigate the participants’ task performances with tasks of different familiarity levels and under three different multitasking conditions: 1) non-multitasking; 2) multitasking with a video as background; and 3) multitasking with a video as part of tests. The study provides expected and unexpected results, which are discussed in the final paper. Keywords: multitasking, novice, expert, learning task, performance task, new media and technology, cognitive load