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  • Essay / Multitasking and Television: A Literature Review

    Since its dominance over radio, television has been a staple of home entertainment. It is the focal point of residents' attention and visual enjoyment. However, the rise of new media technologies, such as cell phones, computers and the Internet, has also led to a new dominance of use in the home. This is particularly important because increased use of both media can result in competing attentions between them. This may lead to the old television medium being used at the same time with these new media. This moves away from other types of multitasking with TV, like eating and talking while watching. The parallel use of television and new media has also warranted further study by many researchers exploring the results of this multitasking phenomenon and its research. Levy and Gardner's (2012) work explores the accuracy of students' speech while simultaneously completing tasks on the computer. They hypothesize that more complex actions on the primary task, the computer, interrupt speech, the secondary task (Levy & Gardner, 2012, p. 562). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay They relate this to television, in the sense that it is the primary medium and “well-practiced routines…like eating” are secondary (Levy & Gardner, 2012, p. 560). They explore this through an experiment with two students working together on computers while conversing. They concluded that “routine tasks can be accomplished without interruption of conversation” and that “more complex tasks [show more] problems in conversation or silence” (Levy and Gardner, 2012, p. 583). The work of Kononova et al. (2014) examine new and old media multitasking habits among college students. Their research questions focus on which multitasking media pairs are most popular, which media are most frequently used, and which are most used as primary and secondary (Kononova et al., 2014, p. 621). They explored these by asking students to use television, games, music, non-musical audio, phones, and the Internet in different pairs, then rating their own frequency and perceived attentiveness in each pair (Kononova et al., 2014, p. They found that “television as the primary media was often used simultaneously with [a] telephone…and the Internet” (Kononova et al., 2014, p. 627). Contrary to Levy and Gardener's (2012) view that television is the primary medium, Kononova et al. (2014) also found that it was used as both primary and secondary, and was interchangeable with other media such as music, phones, and the Internet (p. 560, p. 628). They also concluded that this multimedia multitasking “changes individuals' perceptions of the attention they give to media messages” (Kononova et al., 2014, p. 637). Kitterød (2001) further explores the actual method of recording these behaviors stating that the time spent recording secondary activities can affect the recording of primary activities (p. 146). Kitterød (2001) explains that by showing various Norwegian time use studies dating back to 1991, a time series diary type study is unreliable due to the unreliability of human recording (p. 146 ). Kitterød (2001) also explains how difficult it is to determine when a person is participating in a.