Can you accurately monitor your behaviors while multitasking? The effect of multitasking on metacognition

Bounded Rationality in Study Time Allocation: Evidence Based on Risky Choice Framing Effects

When allocating study time for the English sections of the National College Entrance Examination or the Postgraduate Entrance Examination, learners often encounter value-test likelihood trade-offs, where questions of similar difficulty may have different points and different likelihoods of being tested. This research explored how individuals allocated study time and whether this process exhibited bounded rationality by examining the risky choice framing effects in study time allocation. The research set up two types of items: 1-point items with a 90% likelihood and 9-point items with a 10% likelihood. Each type of item had the same test likelihood but was expressed in different framings. For the 90% likelihood items, the test framing emphasized that they had a 90% likelihood of being tested. Meanwhile, the non-test framing emphasized that they had a 10% likelihood of not being tested. A total of 41 college students participated in the study, and they were allowed to self-regulate their study time for each type of item. The results showed that learners' study time allocation differed under the two equivalent framings. This indicates that the process of study time allocation is not completely rational, but is rather boundedly rational, which is inconsistent with the expected utility theory.

The effects of multitasking on metacognitive monitoring in primary and secondary school students

Influenced by the epidemic and the rapid popularization of smart devices, media multitasking has become increasingly common in people's lives and has attracted the attention of researchers, particularly among adolescents who are native to the digital era. However, previous studies have focused primarily on the relationship between multitasking and general cognitive functions, paying less attention to the connection between multitasking and metacognition, and there is a lack of research specifically addressing adolescents in this context. To address this gap, the current study conducted two experiments with upper primary and secondary school students to explore the relationship between multitasking and adolescents' metacognition under intrinsic and extrinsic cue conditions using metacognitive monitoring as an indicator. The results revealed that multitasking significantly reduced adolescents' metacognitive monitoring accuracy. However, the scores on the media multitasking questionnaire did not significantly correlate with metacognitive monitoring accuracy in the laboratory task. This finding suggested that multitasking, under both intrinsic and extrinsic cue conditions, impairs the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring for primary and secondary school students. However, daily media multitasking activities among these students were not significantly correlated with metacognitive monitoring accuracy.