A longstanding folk belief suggests that 'busy' people possess the ability to get more done than others. Busyness, defined as the demands of everyday life, has been shown to generate cognitive load, which has been called 'cognitive busyness.' Although most cognitive theory would deny the possibility that cognitive load may enhance performance, some recent research may support the possibility. Cowan's 1988 information-processing model was used to study how measures of everyday busyness correlated with performance on cognitive tasks. The research question addressed whether any combination of such measures, in combination with working memory, could predict performance on such tasks. 92 participants, paid workers with Amazon Mechanical Turk, engaged in an online process, starting with completion of a validated self-report instrument to measure busyness. They then participated in 2 activities, structured as games and designed to measure working memory and cognitive performance. Multiple regressions, linear and nonlinear, were used to identify significant predictors of performance. Results of the analyses did not reveal any evidence for significant relationships between the variables. Additionally, 'volitional busyness' did not appear to enhance, or even affect, performance on a planning task. Further research exploring the effect of these variables on a working memory-based task may be worthwhile, if only to confirm the present findings. This project might benefit linguists tracking semantic change, showing how a term may adopt an entirely different meaning and suggesting further refinement in identifying such shifts over the years; psychologists exploring cognitive load and its effects; and social psychologists interested in making corrections to popular perceptions of the value of tradition gender-associated tasks.

Forskning har visat att kognitiv belastning påverkar stereotyper och fördomar och hur människan agerar på dem. Då mobiltelefoni är en variant av kognitiv belastning som ökar undersöktes huruvida kognitiv belastning i form av mobiltelefonliknande input påverkar implicita fördomar samt om effekten skiljer sig beroende på kön och ålder. Deltagare var 162 studenter (94 kvinnor) i åldrarna 19–59 år (Md = 24) från en medelstor mellansvensk stad. Under studiens första del läste deltagarna, med eller utan mobiltelefonliknande störning, en vinjettext om en arbetslös man från antingen Västmanland eller Somalia och skattade därefter sin uppfattning om mannen i syfte att exponera implicita fördomar. Studiens andra del mätte explicita fördomar genom Modern Racial Prejudice scale. Resultatet bekräftade inte hypotesen att mobilstörning medför ökade implicita fördomar. En tendens att uppfatta invandraren mindre och svensken mer som belastning vid mobilstörning erhölls. Resultatets indikationer för stereotypbilden av invandraren och förändrade fördomar i samhället diskuterades.

Product placement has been intensely studied in almost every mass communications medium. One notable exception is in children's picture books where scholarship on the placement of products and brands has been severely underserved despite a steady presence in a medium integral to socialization and society. The present study recognizes the unique characteristics of the shared reading that takes place in this medium and explores its effects on memory for and attitudes toward product placements within children's picture books. Using a laboratory experiment, quantitative statistical analysis of resulting data, and qualitative exploration of themes resulting from subjects' responses, the present study demonstrates that the practice of shared reading positively affects both recollection and attitudes toward product placement in children's picture books. It also discusses the results in the context of their ethical and practical applications and implications.