Citation

Zhang W, Jeong SH, Fishbein M. J. Media Psychol. 2010; 22(1): 2-13.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Psychological Association, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/1864-1105/a000002

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study investigates how multitasking interacts with levels of sexually explicit content to influence an individual's ability to recognize TV content. A 2 (multitasking vs. nonmultitasking) by 3 (low, medium, and high sexual content) between-subjects experiment was conducted. The analyses revealed that multitasking not only impaired task performance, but also decreased TV recognition. An inverted-U relationship between degree of sexually explicit content and recognition of TV content was found, but only when subjects were multitasking. In addition, multitasking interfered with subjects' ability to recognize audio information more than their ability to recognize visual information.