Multitasking in background noise may involve greater cognitive processing demands than multitasking in quiet due to an increase in perceptual demands (Rabbitt, 1968; Pichora-Fuller & Schneider, 2000). This study investigated the effect of background noise in the listening environment on the ability of young adults with normal hearing and older adults with sensorineural hearing loss to perceive speech while performing a secondary task. A dual task paradigm, which included word recognition and visual serial recall, was used to examine ability to divide limited processing resources between two tasks. The number of digits to be recalled was varied in order to test the hypothesis that background noise would degrade multitasking abilities to a greater degree than in quiet for more difficult tasks. Participants included 37 native English speakers between 19-25 years of age with pure-tone thresholds better than or equal to 20 dB HL and 10 English speakers between 58-85 years of age with pure-tone thresholds greater than or equal to 25 dB HL in both ears. The results showed that background noise can have negative effects on the ability to multitask for both younger adults with normal hearing and older adults with hearing loss; however, this effect was greater for the older adults with hearing loss, especially when task demands were increased.

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This study explored the relationship between message modalities and memory performance in a media environment. In order to examine the role of message modalities in media multitasking activity, this research investigated the memory performance of participants after their exposure with the news stories and the commercials between same and different modalities. The research employed a 2 X 3 experiment using two independent variables: Modality of news broadcast (audio news vs. audio-visual news) and modality of commercials (audio commercials vs. visual commercials vs. audio-visual commercials). The research questionnaire was intended to reveal the influence of modality on participant performance by recalling the content of news stories, brand names of the commercials and product types of the commercials. Although the results indicate that there is no significant interaction effect of news modality and commercial modality on news recall, the majority of hypothesized interaction effect received support in this study. Finally, this research reinforces the school of human cognitive capacities are domain-specific.

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Use of cellular phones while driving, and safety implications thereof, has captured public and scientific interest. Previous research has shown that driver reactions and attention are impacted by cellular phone use. Generally, previous research studies have not focused on how visual attention and driver performance may interact. Strayer and colleagues found lower recognition for items present in the driving environment when drivers were using a cellular phone than when not using the phone; however, the tested items were not directly relevant to driving. Relevance to driving may have an impact on attention allocation. The current project used a mediumidelity driving simulator to extend previous research in two ways: 1) how attention is allocated across driving-relevant and -irrelevant items in the environment was investigated, and 2) driving performance measures and eye movement measures were considered together rather than in isolation to better illustrate the impact of cellular phone distraction on driver behavior. Results from driving performance measures replicated previous findings that vehicle control is negatively impacted by driver distraction. Interestingly, there were no interactions of relevance and distraction found, suggesting that participants responded to potential hazards similarly in driving-only and distraction conditions. In contrast to previous research, eye movement patterns (primarily measured by number of gazes) were impacted by distraction. Gaze patterns differed across relevance levels, with hazards receiving the most gazes, and signs receiving the fewest. The relative size of the critical items may have impacted gaze probability in this relatively undemanding driving environment. In contrast to the driving performance measures, the eye movement measures did show an interaction between distraction and relevance; thus, eye movements may be a more direct and more sensitive measure of driver attention. Recognition memory results were consistently near chance performance levels and did not reflect the patterns found in the eye movement or driving performance measures.

A system generation utility has been developed to assist students in producing IBM PC-based multitasking applications targeted for the small operating system (SOS) developed by Jerry E. Sayers. Our aim is to augment SOS by enabling a student to interactively tailor the characteristics of the operating system to meet the requirements of a particular application. The system allows the user to adjust factors such as: initial state, priority, and scheduling method of concurrently executed tasks, and. also, use of system resources. A custom operating system is produced by invoking a MAKE utility to bind SOS with application-specific code, in addition to intermediate source code created during the system generation process. Testing of the system included implementing an application that adds column vectors in a 5 x 5000 matrix concurrently. Further testing involves using the system generation utility along with SOS as part of an undergraduate operating systems class at East Tennessee State University.

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The growth of the internet combined with the proliferation of portable electronic devices has caused an increased use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the workplace. Also in meetings, which present an important tool to communicate and interact within the team, the use of portable electronic devices is common. Individuals frequently use their smartphones and laptops while attending a meeting for meeting-related or -unrelated activities. This behaviour is defined as electronic multitasking. Literature indicates that there are both positive and negative effects of electronic multitasking that might improve the process of a meeting or impair the interaction during a meeting. Since it is the meeting leader’s responsibility to conduct effective and efficient meetings she has to manage potential effects of electronic multitasking. Hence, the meeting leader should make use of positive effects and in this case encourage Electronic Multitasking. On the other hand, if electronic multitasking has negative effects on the meeting, the leader has to limit this behaviour. Considering the entrance of younger generations into the workforce who are more confident in ICT use and view their devices as an important part of their life, the rising relevance of discussing and investigating the management of electronic multitasking in more depth is evident. However, there are only limited empirically developed approaches available to manage the effects of electronic multitasking. By conducting a multiple case study, this major gap was addressed.The case study has been carried out in November 2015 in Umeå, Sweden. Through seven semi-structured interviews with experienced meeting leaders, rich qualitative data has been collected. To analyse this data, a tool called Thematic Network Analysis has been used. Our results encompass several management approaches for meeting leaders to both enhance and limit the effects of electronic multitasking. The identified approaches serve as a toolbox from which a leader has to choose the appropriate approach according to the context that is shaped by the participants, meeting situation and organisation. Leaders can set strict rules at the beginning of a meeting, for example by banning devices. To improve the enforcement of rules, they should be negotiated and respected by the leader as well. Electronic multitasking can be limited by actively confronting multitasking participants during or after the meeting with their inappropriate behaviour. The leader can also make jokes to catch participants’ attention or encourage interaction. Similarly to confronting people with inappropriate electronic multitasking, the leader can encourage the behaviour in case it is useful. For example, one person can be assigned to take notes from the meeting or phases in which all meeting participants engage in electronic multitasking can be announced. Furthermore, the meeting leader can set up meetings by using features such as agenda, breaks, goals, length, size and topics to influence the amount of electronic multitasking. Finally, the company culture or guidelines regarding the use of portable electronic devices can be shaped and applied by meeting leaders. Hence, practical implications have been made to a large extent. Furthermore, this study provides theoretical contributions in the areas of meeting leadership and electronic multitasking.

<p><strong>Purpose:</strong></p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to, through an ethnographic case study, understand 20-25 year olds‘ multitasking habits when watching TV and to create a framework of the distractions identified for media consumption.</p><p><strong>Background:</strong></p><p>The changes in technology and the new possibilities of consuming media creates a need to understand how people in the ages of 20-25 consume media. Advertising on TV is, in Swe-den, the marketing channel that companies spend the largest amount of money on. Most of the statistics regarding viewing rates are collected in a way that might not give totally accu-rate picture of the actual TV viewing of the consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to do an in-depth study of the media consumption habits of this group.</p><p><strong>Method:</strong></p><p>The study will be conducted, through an ethnographic case study where the researchers ob-serve a sample of four people in the target group during 10 sessions. Each session will be two hours long, and during, the researchers will observe the group‘s media consumption habits when watching TV. The observers will also look at the multitasking habits of the group, what media and distractions are combined while watching TV.</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong></p><p>The researchers conclude that multitasking is a common occurrence in the target groups media consumption. The authors have identified four categories that distracts the viewer‘s focus from TV commercials. The first three are distractions being, social, media and non-media distractions. The fourth category is technical avoidance, where people tend to switch channels or mute the sound in order to avoid commercials. Further, an important factor af-fecting the level of multitasking was whether the TV viewing was planned or unplanned. It was observed that this had an effect on the level of commercial avoidance when watching TV. Finally, four different models have been created as a framework to help marketers un-derstand the consumers behavior.</p> / <p><strong>Syfte: </strong></p><p>Syftet med avhandlingen är att, genom en etnografisk fallstudie, förstå 20-25 åringars multi-tasking vanor när de tittar på TV och att modeller för distraktioner som identifierats för mediekonsumtion.</p><p><strong>Bakgrund: </strong></p><p>De tekniska förändringarna och de nya möjligheterna för på vilka sätt media kan konsume-ras skapar ett behov av att förstå hur människor i åldrarna 20-25 konsumerar media. Re-klam på TV är i Sverige den marknadsföringskanal som företagen spenderar mest pengar på. De mesta av statistiken om tittarsiffror samlas på ett sätt som inte kan ge helt korrekt bild av det faktiska TV-tittande för konsumenterna, och därför är det nödvändigt att göra en fördjupad studie av mediekonsumtion vanorna för denna grupp.</p><p><strong>Metod: </strong></p><p>Studien kommer att genomföras genom en etnografisk fallstudie, där forskarna observerar ett urval av fyra personer i målgruppen under 10 separata tillfällen i objektets hem. Detta för att skapa en så naturlig miljö som möjligt. Varje observation kommer att vara i två timmar och under dessa observationer kommer forskarna studera objektens mediekonsum-tion vanor när de tittar på TV. Författarna kommer även att observera gruppens multita-sking vanor under TV tittandet, tillsammans med vilka media och distraktioner som kom-bineras i detta sammanhang.</p><p><strong>Slutsats: </strong></p><p>Författarna drar slutsatsen att multitasking är en vanlig företeelse i målgruppens mediekon-sumtion. Fyra kategorier är identifierade som distraherar tittarens fokus från TV reklam. De tre första kategorierna distraktioner nämligen social, media och övriga distraktioner. Den fjärde kategorin är tekniska åtgärder för att undvika reklam. En viktig faktor som på-verkar nivån av multitasking var om TV-tittandet var planerat eller oplanerat, och det kon-staterades att detta hade inverkan på nivån av kommersiell undvikelse när de tittade på TV. Författarna har skapat fyra modeller som kan användas för att underlätta för marknadsföra-re att förstå och nå denna målgrupp.</p>

This research examines mixed reality meetings, a context where individuals attend to both face-to-face group members while multitasking with technology. In these meetings, members engage simultaneously with those physically present and those outside of the meeting (virtual communication partners). Technology multitasking in meetings has a dual effect: it not only impacts the individual user, it has the potential to transform how collocated groups communicate and work together since attention becomes fragmented across multiple competing tasks. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to investigate mixed reality meetings across four themes: (1) the factors contributing to the likelihood to multitask based on meeting type, polychronicity (one’s preference for multitasking), and cohesion beliefs, (2) behavior during mixed reality assessed by copresence management, (3) attitudes toward technology multitasking, and (4) subjective outcomes measured by perceived productivity and meeting satisfaction. The qualitative data set consists of fieldwork from a global software company and interviews with 8 information workers. The quantitative data are comprised of survey results from the fieldwork site (n=156) and an online panel of information workers (n=110). Results indicate that information workers perceive distinct meeting types that are associated with implicit norms for appropriate technology multitasking. These norms varied based on the relevance of a meeting segment and if a power figure was present. A higher preference score for multitasking (high polychronicity) was significantly correlated with increased technology multitasking and perceived productivity. Members of cohesive teams exhibited the most technology multitasking and perceived their teammates multitasking as appropriate. However, outsiders who exhibited the same behaviors were viewed as rude and distracting. Overall, information workers who multitasked during meetings did so with electronic communication tasks (e-mail and instant messaging) as opposed to other computing tasks (e.g. writing documents, researching information). These findings are discussed in relation to psychological studies on multitasking, computer-supported cooperative work, and social constructionist views of technology use. This dissertation is a contribution to the assessment of technology use in social settings, particularly in organizations where tasks are often interrupted and a reliance on electronic communication tools impacts how people manage and accomplish work. / text