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Bob Zhao Defended AP Research Project

08 Apr 2017 . Category . Comments #teaching #advising #committee #outreach

Bob Zhao Defended AP Research Project today: “Cognitive Impacts of Inter-study Session Media Multitasking on Study Productivity”

This work was also accepted and presented (simultaneously with defense) at NCUR

I was Bob’s mentor for conducting the experiment (design and analysis). His project looked at the short term effect of media multitasking on n-back performance as compared to a study session control. He found an effect of short-term media multitasking that degraded n-back performance, which surprised me. Since the n-back requires processes besides WM, the mechanism by which media multitasking degrades performance isn’t clear, but my guess is that it involves an impairment of top-down discrepancy monitoring similar to what occurs in mind wandering.