Given the prevalence of multitasking today, it is critical to understand how multitasking affects the mind. Recent studies have suggested that frequent multitaskers perform worse on tasks requiring cognitive control. Nevertheless, others have suggested that frequent multitasking may lead to an improvement of parallel processing abilities, perhaps at the expense of serial processing. The current study examined whether the degree to which a person engages in media multitasking affects the balance between serial and parallel processing styles. Moreover, we examined the idea that heavy multitaskers would be biased toward the parallel processing of tasks. For this study, parallel processing was indexed by the divergent thinking paradigm, the AUT (Alternative Uses Task), and serial processing by the convergent thinking paradigm, the RAT (Remote Associates Test). Our hypothesis was that people who frequently media multitask would display higher measures of divergent thinking, while those who media multitask to a lesser degree would in turn display higher measures of convergent thinking. 528 college students completed the Media Use Questionnaire in order to compute their Media Multitasking Inventory (MMI) score, as well as the RAT and AUT. A negative relationship between MMI score and AUT scores was found, indicating that more time spent media multitasking was associated with less divergent thinking. There was no significant effect of MMI and RAT scores. Subjects who completed the AUT online performed significantly worse than their in-person counterparts. These results suggest that the more an individual media multitasks, the poorer cognitive flexibility they command. Further, the context and environment in which these heavier media multitaskers operate in may influence their degree of cognitive flexibility.
Individual differences in media multitasking ability: The importance of cognitive flexibility