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.

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

With the pace of life accelerating, multitasking has become the norm in daily life. According to research, multiple cognitive processes, including numerical reasoning, comprehension, and writing, are negatively affected by multitasking. However, only a few studies have investigated the relationship between multitasking and metacognition. In this study, the effect of multitasking on metacognition was examined using a prospective monitoring paradigm (prediction of subsequent recall performance). In Experiment 1, the participants simultaneously studied word pairs (primary task) and differentiated between different sound pitches (secondary task) and then predicted their performance in a subsequent memory test for the studied word pairs (prospective metacognitive monitoring). The accuracy of metacognitive evaluation with multitasking was then compared with that without multitasking. In Experiment 2, sounds and icons of real-life applications were used to improve the ecological validity of the experiment in the secondary task. The results indicated that multitasking impaired metacognition in both artificial and real-life simulated scenarios. In addition, the participants who engaged in more media multitasking in their daily lives exhibited poorer metacognitive monitoring abilities in single tasks.