Cybercognition

Lee Hadlington

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OceanofPDF.com
Cybercognition
Lee Hadlington

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SAGE Publications Ltd
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© Lee Hadlington 2017
First published 2017
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To Mrs Denise, for all the help with the proof-reading (and the inherent
abuse that accompanied it)
To Nadia, for being the most supportive office mate I could ever hope for
and the endless supply of chocolate
To my Mom and Dad who never really knew what I was doing, but were
always there to support me
To Steph … for being the most valuable baseline for my ramblings and for
being there when it all became a little bit too much

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Contents
About the Author
Preface
1 Exploring the Concept of Cyberspace
2 The Human Information Processor
3 The Population(s) of Cyberspace
4 Attracting Attention in the Digital Environment
5 Digital Gaming, Brain Training and Cognition
6 Multitasking
7 Task Switching and Digital Technology: The Impact of Interruptions
8 Technology and Education
9 Decision-Making in the Online Environment: Credibility
10 Search Strategies and Heuristics
11 Technology Addictions and Cognition
12 The End: Where Do We Go from Here?
References
Index

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About the Authors
Dr Lee Hadlington
has been a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University since 2006 after
completing his PhD at Wolverhampton University. Originally coming
from a background in applied cognitive psychology, he has developed
a research profile in the area of cyberpsychology. His main focus of
interest is exploring the way in which humans use cognition in the
online environment as well as the potential for digital technology to
change the underlying processes that we use in daily life. Associated
with his work in the area of cyberpsychology is a keen interest in
exploring key aspects of technology-enabled crime. He has also
worked extensively with a variety of organisations exploring aspects of
insider threat, susceptibility to cybercrime and attitudes towards
cybersecurity. The aim of this research is to help identify potential
indicators that could highlight a susceptibility to cybercrime alongside
an examination of how individual differences play a role in risky
cybersecurity behaviours.
The author also attempts to hide his mild Haribo addiction from his co-
workers on a daily basis and has a 14-year-old cat that still believes
she is a kitten. When not trapped behind a desk or teaching his lovely
students he likes nothing better than to throw himself around various
forest trails on his trusty mountain bike, much to the annoyance of dog
walkers, ramblers and his army of minions that have to wash his
bike/clothes.

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Preface
Whilst on a research-related jolly to London to visit an organisation I was
working with I had the fortune to be standing on a crowded tube, in rush
hour with a colleague. In my position as a psychologist and general all-
round nosey individual I began to scan the carriage for something that
would distract me from (a) the rather noxious smell of perfume, deodorant
and old shoes that was inhabiting my nose and (b) my inherent dislike of
crowded spaces. A scene that, to this day, I still recount began to catch both
my eye and my intellectual curiosity. A mother was standing over a
pushchair wilfully transfixed by something on her smartphone. Meanwhile,
her daughter sat mesmerised by her mother’s interactions with the
aforementioned device, occasionally pausing to quickly scan the
environment in front of her to see if there was anything slightly more
interesting. When this process failed, the child’s facial expression changed
somewhat suddenly, and all of a sudden she began grasping at the air
uttering the words, ‘iPad, Mommy … iPad, Mommy’. Sure enough, without
actually saying a word and taking her eyes of the smartphone, the mother
rummaged around in a jumble of bags that lay behind the pushchair and
produced an iPad. Once received the child began to gleefully swipe, shake
and poke to her heart’s content while the mother continued on her quest to
wear the screen of the smartphone out by the sheer power of staring.
I had previously explored some aspects of human cognition online as part
of a funded research project, but my experience on the tube in London
started me on a path that resulted in this book. I started to think about the
way in which we all seemed to be drifting in a trance-like state in a world
that was subsumed by digital technology, and where the interactions I had
viewed on the tube were becoming the norm, not the exception. As I started
to delve a little deeper into the subject matter, I started to notice more and
more how digital technology was impacting on our daily lives. I sat in
coffee shops noticing that people were sitting down and automatically
taking out their smartphones and placing them on the tables in front of
them; on nights out, friends would be more interested in posting the perfect
selfie to Facebook than they were in actually engaging in socialisation;
couples out for a romantic meal would sit next to each other, often
communicating through the medium of WhatsApp to find out what the
other was ordering; people walking blindly across roads or into street
furniture whilst being preoccupied with posting what they had for breakfast
on Twitter. Now before we get into name calling, I do have mates and my
name isn’t Billy – I just observed these things whilst I was alone, and it is
something that once you notice you find it hard to switch off. I wanted to
start to understand the impact digital technology was having in terms of
both its depth and breadth, not just in the context of social and
developmental issues but also the processes that govern these, the cognitive
processes that underlie them. More and more I became interested in the way
we deploy our existing cognitive skills whilst we are engaged in the use of
digital technology. My secondary concern was the one that actually served
to drive me to complete this book, and that was if we are using digital
technology on such a massive scale, could it be actually changing the way
in which we think? The question didn’t really present itself as being
something simple or straightforward, and even now I am still finding new
information that adds to the story that is being told here. It isn’t until you
actually sit down and commit words to screen that you realise the enormity
of the issue as well as the complexity that underlies such a question. The
key to this book is that the story is just beginning, and I want it to be seen as
a first attempt to draw most of the strands of research on this topic together
in one place. If the reader takes anything away at the end, it should be the
understanding that more work is needed in this area and more research
needs to be conducted so further tales can be told. The question of whether
digital technology is impacting on the way in which we think seems even
more poignant when we consider the interaction viewed on the London tube
several years ago; it is the younger and developing generation that is being
immersed in a technological environment that no one else will have
experienced before. Now this isn’t about being judgemental, or
implementing a nanny-state where the time spent on the Internet is strictly
governed; it is more about being responsible and acquiring as much
information as possible about both the positives and negatives for engaging
in the use of digital technology.
If you are expecting a stuffy, aloof and humourless exploration of our
interactions with digital technology that is devoid of anecdotal evidence and
a feverish attempt to engage the reader … you had better step away from
this book and leave quietly. However, if you like the sound of an alternative
approach to the former, have an interest in the area of cyberpsychology and
want to start to understand the current themes that guide our exploration of
cognition online, then, reader, you have come to the right place.

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1 Exploring the Concept of Cyberspace
Learning Aims and Objectives
This chapter will:
introduce the key aims for the material covered in the book;
present a clear outline for the key concepts and terminology that
will form the building blocks for later discussion;
explore the concept and present definitions of cyberspace;
highlight the notion that cyberspace is a wholly psychological
construct.
Overview
It is important to make a statement about the primary aims of this book
right from the very start so that (a) you are clear on its contents and the
scope of the discussion within and (b) you don’t spend your money
unnecessarily! There are two key aims of this book. The first is to explore
the cognitive processes we are deploying when we are online and whether
these differ substantially from the ones that we deploy when offline. The
secondary aim is an exploration of how engaging in the online environment
is affecting us on a psychological level, particularly in terms of changing
our cognitive processes, altering the way in which our memory functions
and how we pay attention. Therefore the exploration set out in this book is
as much about how we are processing information when online as it is
about how technology is affecting the way in which we do this. What this
book will not do is spend pages and pages discussing the finer details of the
technology that subsumes our experiences online. It should be stated that
the important aspect here is not the technology itself (this has been the
focus of many discussions, papers and reports), but the impact the use of
such tools is having upon the human element within that system. There will
be a short introduction to the key concepts, but hopefully these will serve as
a guide to those who have the most basic of understanding in all concepts
related to the online world.
Cybercognition is a term that I use to describe the cognitive activities
humans conduct in cyberspace, whether it is through digital media,
smartphones, computers or tablet devices (Hadlington et al., 2013). The
term is intended to cover a topic that has two distinct levels, and attempts to
bridge a perceived gap with what we traditionally view as cognition in an
offline environment. In the first instance the term is used to explore the
concept of cognition in the online digital environment, with the aim of
understanding how such mechanisms are being deployed in this sphere.
Second, it also aims to encapsulate the possibility that being engaged in
these activities could be actively changing the way in which we use certain
aspects of cognition, whether this be a perceived negative or positive. The
term includes an exploration of all areas underpinning human cognition
alongside the context of any digital environment, as well as the associated
interactions with new and emergent technologies that give us access to it.
What is presented here is the sum of our current knowledge related to our
interactions with technology and its sphere of influence on these cognitive
capabilities (see ‘Cybercognition in the Real World’ box). The impact of
this has a wide-ranging set of implications across elements of learning,
memory, attention, problem-solving and decision-making, to highlight just a
few. It is important to note that the effect the use of this technology is
having on our cognitive processes should not be seen as wholly negative,
with a great deal of assistive technology providing scaffolding capacities for
aspects such as learning as well as aiding those who have severe learning
difficulties or dementia and memory impairment (Carrillo et al., 2009;
DePompei et al., 2008; LoPresti et al., 2008; O’Neill et al., 2014).
Cybercognition in the Real World: Transactive Memory
Previous work by researchers Sparrow et al. (2011) noted a
trend for individuals to remember less factual information (or
semantic memory) in favour of a more defined memory for
where to find this information. Essentially they noted a growing
reliance on the notion that ‘Google knows’, with their research
showing that the majority of participants in their study were
using the Internet as another form of social or transactive
memory. There are pros and cons to this: essentially, as our
brains are having to remember less information there is more
space for us to fill with other things, but if we lose access to the
Internet as a source of information, we lose the capacity to
access those facts we might need.
Humans have always shown the potential to evolve alongside new and
emerging technologies, with such technological advancements providing
mechanisms for an associated shift in cognition. One of the key reasons
why this issue is such a point of concern for people in modern society is the
speed at which technology is developing. In the words of Whittle (1997),
cyberspace:
represents one of the most significant advances the world has ever
witnessed in providing humankind with a vehicle to access data and
information … The development of language, the invention of the
printing press, the creation of libraries, the advent of the mass media –
all have played pivotal roles in advancing civilization; but none has
had the explosive impact and potential of cyberspace. (p. 30)
Whittle explores the ways in which cyberspace and our interactions within
it can change the very shape of our laws, businesses, cultures and education.
However, the question that is neglected in discussion is the one that is key
to our very existence as well as our everyday functioning: are our cognitive
capabilities evolving at a fast enough rate to allow us to keep up with the
demands of cyberspace? This is where the basis for this book begins.
The Internet, the World Wide Web and
Cyberspace
This is not a preamble to a post-modern interpretation of the unique Narnia
universe created by C. S. Lewis, but rather an exploration of the key
elements or ‘levels’ that can be viewed in the context of the online world.
These levels can be conceptualised in terms of how abstracted they are,
from the very physical to the more intangible. This section aims to provide
a clearer introduction to some of the basic terminology that will frame the
discussion throughout the rest of the book. An assumption is often made
that we are all aware of the key differences between the Internet, the World
Wide Web (WWW) and cyberspace. However, in reality, although many
people engage with the online digital environment, I suspect that very few
actually understand that there is a difference in what these terms refer to. It
could be argued that buying cheese online or surfing the web looking for
humorous pictures of cats doesn’t really need a deeper understanding of
such nuances in the terminology. You don’t necessarily have to know how
to build a computer in order to use it, but as for you, my intrepid reader,
brace yourself and prepare to be amazed! Many mistakenly assume that all
of the three elements discussed above are one and the same, but the further
exploration outlined in the following section will make it clear that they are
not.
The Internet
In the context of this book the label of ‘Internet’ (note the use of the capital
‘I’ in this instance) is used to describe the globally interconnected network
of computers. The use of the term ‘internet’ (lower-case ‘i’) is a generally
accepted reference to the ‘internetwork’ that originated in the early days of
the Internet, and makes reference to a more localised system of
interconnected computers, such as a local intranet (Praziale et al., 2006).
The Internet is a technological structure that has a physical presence, with
wires, connectors, Ethernet cables and the shiny devices we all adore and
worship. The Internet is the thing that allows information to be transmitted
around the world in a matter of seconds through the use of computer code.
The World Wide Web (WWW)
The term ‘Internet’ is something that is often confused with the World Wide
Web, with the latter being the information-sharing platform that is built on
top of the Internet. The WWW affords the capacity for any normal
individual, not versed in the joys of programming and HTTP, the freedom
to navigate around, collect information and post amusing pictures of food
on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The Internet is merely the system that
allows the WWW to exist, and without the Internet there would be no
WWW. In contrast, the Internet existed long before Sir Tim Berners-Lee
developed the WWW and could still exist if the WWW disappeared
overnight. The important aspect for us as humans is that the WWW affords
us elements of social, cultural and cognitive interaction that would be
difficult or impossible for many individuals. The distinction between the
two systems, although not inherently important for understanding the
impact that technology is having on human cognition, is important if we are
to assign how aspects of these technologies are impacting upon us.
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is something slightly different from elements such as the
Internet and the WWW. When we are talking about cyberspace we are
making reference to the psychological environment in which individuals are
engaging in interactions, experiences, thoughts and emotions whilst being
online. The WWW is purely a tool for individuals to explore and share
information, and only when this is taken one step further and the individual
begins to interact with that information does that environment become our
‘cyberspace’, the online environment where we live to exchange ideas and
experiences.
Whittle (1997) presents some clear outlines of what cyberspace is and
should be viewed as, and his work has been fundamental in driving other
researchers to explore how we view this environment. Predominantly
Whittle sees the notion of cyberspace as being virtual in nature, but also
something that can be both real and artificial at the same time. At the same
time Whittle also likens our experience of cyberspace to being in a trance-
like state that we may enter into when we become fully engrossed in the
thing that we are doing, such as reading, surfing or writing. In Whittle’s
view the realm of cyberspace should be considered the ‘digital
complement’ to the atomic or physical offline world.
Cyberspace is also viewed as being something that is accessed through
some form of physical device that has an element of artificial processing
built into it, be it a smartphone, laptop or tablet PC. The actual access point,
in any context, is irrelevant, but without this access device Whittle states
that there is no difference between cyberspace and communication within
an offline environment. The device being used will define the nature of the
individual’s experience within cyberspace, and according to Whittle these
devices appear as the ‘window’ through which we view and enter
cyberspace.
Finally, cyberspace allows individuals and groups to interact and
communicate, as well as the ability to share creative output outside of the
constraints of time and physical space. Importantly, Whittle noted that
without this essential element of interaction the concept of cyberspace
becomes obsolete. Similarly the notion of interaction in the context of
cyberspace is viewed as being a qualitatively different phenomenon from
what we experience in the offline environment, where it might be indirect,
delayed or separated by distance (this also fits into the psychological
concepts outlined by Suler (2005; which will be discussed below) which
will be discussed below). Whittle notes that individuals create an illusion of
immediacy in the context of online interactions as there are no limiting
factors to force responses, and they can happen where both time and place
are shifted.
Whittle actually presented two definitions of the concept of cyberspace, the
earlier one being a working concept that was modified to use more
understandable terms. The final definition presented by Whittle is one that
will be used to encapsulate the digital environment in which the later
concepts related to cognition will be discussed, so it is presented here in its
entirety:
Cy*ber*space (sī-bûr-spās) n.
1. A fictional, psychic space where minds fuse in a trance-like
“consensual hallucination”.
2. The conceptual world of networked interactions between
individuals and their intellectual creations and everything
associated with such networks and interactions.
3. The state of mind shared by people communicating using digital
representations of language and sensory experience who are
separated by time and space but connected by networks of
physical access devices. (Whittle, 1997: 9)
There are some important points to this definition, with the initial point
making reference to the first author to use the term cyberspace as William
Gibson in the sci-fi novel Neuromancer. The shared experience of being
online within cyberspace is likened to being in a trance-like state, a shared
experience that the individuals subject themselves to willingly. The
description unwittingly suggests an almost drug-induced experience, with
aspects of addiction and problematic use being realised in the present.
Whittle’s first concept also makes reference to the concept of ‘psychic’,
again drilling the notion home that cyberspace is a psychologically created
environment. In the second point raised by Whittle we have the interactivity
of cyberspace as well as the exchange of ideas therein, a process that is
again driven by the cognition of the individual. The last sub-definition
relates to a shared, non-physical digital construct that is brought into being
through the use of language and other forms of representation (e.g. digital
media such as video clips). Here the emphasis is on a shared experience that
can occur amongst as well as between individuals. This experience is also
able to occur even though the individuals taking part may not share the
same physical or chronological space. However, the networks of digital
devices that build cyberspace allow everyone who is connected to them the
freedom to engage that same digital environment.
There is an important point to note when we explore Whittle’s
conceptualisation of cyberspace, and that is that at each point the
experiences and interactions are driven by our cognitive processes. As will
become more apparent in the next section, the importance of psychology in
the context of understanding cyberspace is inescapable. Cyberspace is not a
physical thing, so as such is something that is constructed solely through
our ability to represent complex ideas and formulate plans within our heads.
The Internet as a Psychological Construct
When we talk about ‘construction’ in the context of the offline work, we
might create images of an army of builders furiously at work on some
monolithic structure (or in my experience the construction of a chicken
shed). The online environment is no different in terms of being constructed;
however, the building blocks that are used to create it are wholly
psychological in nature. For example, the power to simulate, imagine,
engage and transfer our thoughts, feelings and actions have no physical
equivalent, but can be conveyed through the medium of cyberspace.
Cyberspace is not virtual reality – virtual reality is a technology-driven
environment that presents a reality through the use of technology without
any direct involvement from a human (Steuer, 1992). Cyberspace, on the
other hand, is the reverse of virtual reality – it is our experiences and
thoughts that create the digital environment, and without these cyberspace
would not exist. It is accepted that the tools and devices we use to get
online are inherently physical in nature, but the interactions that are
contained within cyberspace have no clear physical tangibility outside of
that created environment. In order to interact with information and
individuals within cyberspace we have to use a variety of cognitive
processes to engage with, manipulate and reason about the information we
are being presented with – which is why the psychology of cyberspace is so
inherently important for everyone who is using it (and abusing it!).
Cyberspace affords the end user the unique opportunity to consume digital
media at a pace that can far outstrip our capacity to actually digest and
process that information in the same manner we can do in the offline world.
It also provides us with a pervasive lure, and can always provide us with
something that is new, interesting and novel (Small and Vorgan, 2008). This
level of stimulation never actually diminishes, even though we may appear
to be experiencing similar activities over and over again, and for some
researchers it has been suggested that it is this process that could be linked
to an aspect of digital addiction that has become prevalent in today’s digital
culture (Small and Vorgan, 2008). (This aspect will be discussed in Chapter
11.)
Our experiences within cyberspace are governed by key psychological
principles that provide us with a starting point to begin to explore how
individuals are interacting with new and emerging digital technology. The
affective element of our online experiences and interactions relates directly
to the psychology of motivation and emotion. When discussing the affective
elements of cyberspace the focus is to explore the feelings and emotions
that the individual is experiencing whilst being online. Here the individual
may experience a set of similar emotional norms across all elements of
cyberspace, but in other individuals there may be a change in their emotions
according to what they are experiencing and where they have experienced
it. Our experiences within cyberspace can also have consequences in our
offline world, particularly when we are looking at emotional and
motivational factors.
Question to Consider
When someone is ‘defriended’ on Facebook could this affect their
ability to concentrate offline?
In research conducted by Baumeister et al. (2002) the link between social
isolation and the impact this could have upon cognitive processes was
explored. It was noted that those people who were led to believe they would
lead a socially isolated life had large reductions in intelligent thought, more
specifically in terms of speed and accuracy of task performance. So there is
an offline precedence that suggests that our emotive experiences online
could impact on our cognitive processes offline. The individual may
become upset, anxious, angry and distracted from their normal everyday
activities directly as a result of something that has happened online. There
are some more obvious malicious activities that individuals can experience
online that can also impact directly on our self-esteem and psychological
well-being. The emotional and psychological consequences of behaviours
such as cybercrime, cyberstalking and cyberbullying are still being explored
by researchers (e.g. Slonje et al., 2013). Some researchers have noted that
the differences between cyberbullying and offline, face-to-face bullying are
qualitative in nature, meaning that technology has actually created a new
mechanism for individuals to abuse the vulnerable (see Dooley et al., 2009).
In a similar vein, aspects of ‘cyberslacking’ impact on our ability to
motivate and focus in our offline lives, again demonstrating the affective
legacy set by the Internet on our daily lives (O’Neill et al., 2014; Vitak et
al., 2011). Yet another avenue for our activities within cyberspace to leach
out and taint our offline experiences includes elements of cybercrime,
something that has been addressed in the research literature (for the
interested reader, Wall, 2007, provides an excelllent coverage of these
issues in more depth). It is from this perspective that the importance of
exploring the impact technology is having upon our ability to freely engage
in experiences within cyberspace without the fear of incurring
psychological harm and upset becomes more apparent. Human cognition in
terms of processes such as memory, attention, learning and problem solving
do not occur in isolation and are interlaced with the affective elements that
govern our day-to-day existences.
Questions to Consider
Can you easily remember information if you are upset or angry?
Do you pay more attention to disturbing images that you might
accidentally stumble on whilst surfing the web?
Does seeing emotive aspects online make them more memorable, and
does this in turn affect your later decisions?
This interplay between cognition and emotion is a critical one to understand
and accept, particularly when we are exploring elements related to how we
engage with cyberspace. Research has demonstrated that both positive and
negative emotional stimuli can impact significantly on our ability to process
information (Blair et al., 2007). Kensinger (2007) conducted a review of the
research exploring the impact negative emotions can have on memory.
Overall she noted that negative emotions associated with an event served to
enhance the subjective vividness of the memory, but also an increased
likelihood of remembering some of the event details. It is apparent that
when we are discussing the psychological impact of digital technology it is
disingenuous to believe that our emotions and cognitive processes are
always acting in isolation.
To underestimate the influence that psychology has upon our experiences
within cyberspace is very easy. Psychology is a driving force that serves a
pivotal role in generating and maintaining our experiences online, and
without aspects of cognition acting in conjunction with the emotional and
motivation elements mentioned earlier our experiences within cyberspace
would be meaningless. Aspects of cognition allow us to remember pieces of
information as well as giving us the capacity to tie together individual
episodes of our online lives so that the information we are gathering makes
sense. We also need to be able to communicate effectively online to ensure
our messages are getting across without being misunderstood and
misinterpreted, again something that relies heavily on aspects of cognition.
To keep track of our metaphysical position within cyberspace and to
navigate around the myriad online websites and endless links also requires a
capacity not only to remember where we are, but also to identify where we
have been and where we need to go in order to achieve the current goal for
being online. Such a process of online navigation, as will be discussed in
Chapter 10, is an effortful process and relies heavily on a number of
strategies that are developed over a period of time. Without the capacity to
remember, such strategies would be lost and we too would become
disorientated in a constantly evolving online ecosystem.
We could simply make the assumption that our experiences in the digital
world are shaped by cognitive processes that are equitable to how we
accomplish activities and actions in the offline environment. Such an
assertion is perhaps erroneous in nature or may be misguided in the absence
of clear empirical research, something that I hope will be driven further by
this book and the material contained within. At present there is a growing
body of research evidence that is beginning to make the comparison
between how cognitive processes are being deployed in both the online and
offline environments. However, such work is still very much in its infancy
and even less is known about how the use of technology is changing such
processes for better or worse. Many individuals may wish to ignore the fact
that their active use of digital technology could be impacting on other
aspects of their psychological functioning. Without descending into what
could be categorised as some form of evangelic spiel warning against the
horrors of the devil that is the web, it is apparent that many people just
don’t like to be made aware that their beloved piece of technology could be
having a detrimental impact on their capacity to focus, learn and remember.
When you do bring this information to the attention of people there is a
great deal of sudden acceptance, and people are quick to point out that they
are guilty of doing the very things that could cause them longer-term harm
or put them in danger. However, these are the same people you will meet
ten minutes later walking down the street glued to their iPhone just about to
walk into the path of a passing lorry. Change is never easy, but the fact is
that we are being changed at this precise moment in time by the very
technology we are using, and for the most part we are blindly embracing
such a change, not resisting it.
The Psychology of Cyberspace
According to Suler (2005) there are a set of underlying psychological
components that are worthy of discussion here as they set the scene for
some of the key elements that will be introduced later on in the book. As
highlighted earlier, the nature of cyberspace means that it is a wholly
psychological construct that lacks any real physical presence, although for
people online those experiences and the interaction they are engaging in are
just as real as those being undertaken in the offline environment. The
individual can touch a tablet PC, type words using a keyboard or click on a
link using a mouse, which would suggest some form of physicality attached
to these experiences. However, these aspects are just tools that assist us in
getting online, and it is the experiences that they afford us that remain
metacognitive in nature – we know we are having them, but we cannot
physically engage with them as we can in the offline world. In the same
respect those emails, documents and posts that have accumulated online
remain only as a partial record of our online interactions and not the
interactions themselves. Details such as the way in which these documents
were created and the interactions that lead to that final document are lost,
hence missing out vital information that would be necessary to rebuild that
actual iterative process.
Once the psychological components are removed from our engagement
with cyberspace, whatever remains will just be a very basic collection of
data. Without the capacity to analyse, interpret and interact with this
material the essence of what cyberspace is becomes lost. Suler’s (2005)
exploration expands on these key points further and highlights the key
psychological features that distinguish cyberspace from the offline
environment. Each of Suler’s (2005) psychological elements of cyberspace
are discussed in more detail below.
Reduced sensations
Cyberspace is, as has been reiterated here several times already, a non-
physical realm. The critical difference between the online interactions of the
individual and those that are completed offline is the heavy reliance on a
reduced number of senses. If an individual has a normal conversation with
someone in a café or bar they are presented with an array of stimulation
from the whole gamut of senses they have at their disposal. This may
include aspects of smell, taste and touch as well as the relevant non-verbal
cues that accompany human interaction. In contrast our capacity to
communicate in the online environment can be presented as a fairly
sanitised affair, with much of this peripheral information being lost due to
the constraints placed upon us by the technology being used. Elements such
as vocal intonation and finer nuances in terms of delivery are lost, meaning
that a comment included in an email that was meant as sarcasm comes
across as insulting and derogatory. Current advances in aspects of computer
mediated communication (CMC) have presented the opportunity to access
other senses for communication outside that of simple text. Those
individuals familiar with the use of video conferencing will be all too aware
this is a clear possibility, but there are still limits to how far this can go in
emulating an offline experience. For example, there is little capacity for
tactile feedback in an Internet-based video chat, so there is still a reduction
in the amount of sensory feedback the individual can experience whilst
being online.
Text
Irrespective of the advances made in the technology that delivers aspects of
cyberspace to the individual, the typed word still remains the most
dominant mechanism for communicating in the online world. Text is a
fairly static form of communication and has the relevant disadvantage of
being very basic in terms of its capacity to transfer the elements that stand
outside of the actual plain of information contained within it. There is a
skill in being able to transfer aspects such as feeling and empathy through
the medium of text, with many individuals finding such a process difficult.
However, Suler does note that text-based communication in the context of
cyberspace still represents a powerful mechanism for self-expression and
interpersonal communication. For the most part text and the written word
constitute a relatively simple medium to produce, and as long as the
message is targeted at the right populations (cultural and language
boundaries accepted) it can be easily understood and open to a wide
audience. Reading and producing text requires limited specialist knowledge
on the individual, and for the most part humans possess the capacity to
produce written language in some form or another, irrespective of their
stage of development (this relates more directly to the age of the individual
rather than the age of the race). It is also noted that communicating via text
can also be a complex and cognitively demanding process, requiring the
implementation of different mechanisms from simply talking and listening.
According to Suler (2005) there is an aspect of construction, assessment,
maintenance and perception associated with text-based communication in
cyberspace. The individual has to be able to analyse what others are saying
(based on limited knowledge of the other person sometimes) and then
construct responses that accurately present their own ideals and beliefs.
Text in its basic form can be a blunt instrument if care is not taken when
using it, with the smallest mistakes (or that odd tired email) potentially
leading to a completely different message being sent than the one originally
intended.
Temporal Flexibility
In the context of cyberspace individuals are afforded two distinct patterns of
communication linked into a temporal framework. There is concurrent
communication where both individuals occupy the same space in time (but
not necessarily the same location) and the dialogue occurs in real time. This
pattern of communication is viewed as being synchronous. On the other
hand communication can lie ‘dormant’ until the opposing end in the
communication stream picks up the responses, with this forming an
asynchronous communication pattern. In the latter there is no requirement
for both parties to share the same temporal space in order for the
communication to take place. The time taken to respond to communications
can also depend directly upon the level of synchronicity afforded by the
communication method. In the context of the asynchronous communication
pattern there may be days or weeks available to mull over the contents of
the message and prepare a response. In contrast, synchronicity gives the
individual the capacity to respond in the magnitude of seconds or minutes.
In all forms of online communication there is a greater capacity for a ‘lag’
between input and response, something that is not really evident in face-to-
face offline forms of communication.
However, there might be other instances where the time we experience in
cyberspace can appear to be more condensed, a process that is hypothesised
to be a direct by-product of the dynamic environment in which individuals
become immersed. For example, if you are a member of an online chat
room for a period of several months you may become considered as a wiser
and more senior member to whom individuals will delegate decisions and
instil greater credibility compared with those members who have joined
more recently. The underlying infrastructure associated with the Internet
means that everything is in a constant state of flux, and this is also the same
for the individuals who inhabit that environment. People can move from
one aspect to another as they are searching for the next platform to engage
with as their interest in the current one wains. On the other hand individuals
may widen their interests outside the current area of focus, perhaps as a
direct result of their experience with that media, meaning they want to go
off and broaden their horizons in other chat rooms that appeal to that
interest. Essentially time is a flexible construct in the context of cyberspace,
where a week could be analogous to a month or more in terms of traditional
offline engagement terms.
Flexibility of Identity
Cyberspace presents a unique opportunity for individuals to assume
identities that can bear no similarity to our offline selves. If you explore
Google (at your peril!) you can find any number of stories where people
have purported to be something they are not online. Indeed, such a
phenomenon has created its own movie and TV franchise in the form of the
MTV documentary Catfish, which is replete with stories of how people
have formed romantic attachments with people who often turn out not to be
who they say they are. The crucial facet of cyberspace is that there is the
lack of face-to-face interaction, which in turn allows the individual free
reign to create whatever identity (or identities) they choose online. Such a
process is being driven directly by the imagination and ingenuity of the
individual. As an entity in cyberspace the individual is free to assume an
identity or opinion that could match that of your offline persona, or it could
be completely different. You can also engage directly in communication or
become an invisible ‘lurker’, simply looking but not engaging. Such a
process would perhaps be analogous to sitting next to a couple or group in a
public place and just listening in on their conversation – the normal social
conventions in the offline environment don’t really match those of
cyberspace. The concept of trolling is one aspect that is afforded a reality
because of this notion of a flexible identity within cyberspace (Hardaker,
2010).
In the Spotlight: Trolling
Trolling has gone through a variety of iterations since the term
was first presented in the 1990s; originally it was used to
describe a process by which an individual purposefully
provoked another as part of mutual enjoyment (Bishop, 2014).
 However, in more recent years, the emphasis has changed
considerably from one of enjoyment to that of abuse, and the
mutual aspect has altered to that of the individual’s own
enjoyment. There have been several high-profile cases where
individuals in the public eye have deleted or suspended social
networking accounts due to the activities of such trolls. In one
instance the mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne was
forced off Twitter due to a constant stream of abuse from trolls
(www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11237342/Sara-
Payne-quits-Twitter-after-years-of-abuse.html). The daughter of
the late and great actor Robin Williams, Zelda, was also the
victim of online abuse after her father’s suicide, which forced
her to delete both her Instagram and Twitter accounts
(www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11032371/Robin-
Williamss-daughter-Zelda-quits-Twitter-after-being-trolled-
over-fathers-suicide.html). Other high-profile names to have
quit Twitter include the screenwriter Jane Goldman, ‘superbrain’
and all-round decent bloke Stephen Fry, as well as singers such
as Nicki Minaj, Tom Clarke and Sinead O’Connor.
(www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11238018/Celebrity-
Twitter-trolls-The-famous-people-whove-been-driven-off-
social-media-by-abuse.html).
Trolling can also allow an individual the capacity to say whatever they like
without fear of discovery and reprisal upon their offline self. The mask of
anonymity may allow individuals the opportunity to express an opinion that
they may otherwise be unable to discuss, or it may be that it allows them
chance to abuse others online without actual consequences (Suler, 2005).
Altered Perceptions
According to Suler, when we engage in any activity in cyberspace it has the
potential to alter our perceptions of reality and consciousness. He noted that
when we are immersed in the digital environment there could be a
phenomenon where we begin to feel a ‘blending’ of our minds with those
with whom we are communicating. Suler suggested that this very process
might ultimately lead people to engage in activities online for lengthy
periods of time. For many people the interaction they engage in online
affords them an opportunity to escape from the routine of their daily lives,
in turn leading to the potential for aspects of addiction and chronic use
(Suler, 2005).
Transcended Space
Digital technology affords individuals the flexibility to communicate and
interact that no longer has to be confined by geographical boundaries.
Communication technologies developed at each epoch in human history
have served to decrease the metaphysical size of the world in which we
live, with the advent of cyberspace making a small world even smaller. The
capacity to transcend geographical boundaries means that we have greater
freedom to seek out and interact with those who may share similar passions
and interests to us.
Questions to Consider
How many people on the street in which you live would be interested
in the same things that you are?
Now think about whether there are any groups on Facebook that
might share some of your specific interests.
Transcending space allows support groups the capacity to reach a multitude
of individuals who could have potentially missed out on vital support,
interaction and information. However, as with everything, there are
downsides to the aspect of transcended space, as it allows in those who
have agendas outside of support and increases the capacity to attack
individuals and groups without having to leave the comfort of their own
home.
Equalised Status
The interesting thing about being in cyberspace is the concept that it offers
everyone, irrespective of who they might be in the offline environment, a
level playing field on which to get their opinions voiced and heard. This
notion is something that Suler referred to as the ‘net democracy’ and
presents a unique capacity for individuals from any walk of life the ability
to get their message out. The importance of this is something that cannot be
underestimated as previously this may have just been a capacity afforded to
the privileged few, perhaps through published work or by being experts in
their field. In cyberspace the status you have online becomes linked to the
individual’s popularity and that of their message. It also relates directly to
the capacity that individual has for getting that message across effectively
and efficiently using the media of the Internet. The obvious downside to
this aspect of equalised status is that it raises problems for anyone searching
for information online, as well as the associated credibility of that
information (this point will be discussed further in Chapter 9).
Social Multiplicity
Cyberspace affords us with another unique capacity that lies outside of our
normal offline lives. We have the potential to both engage in and maintain
any number of online interactions and relationships, many of which can be
condensed into a very short period of time. These multiple relationships can
happen both synchronously and asynchronously, but more importantly they
can be achieved without the other person in the relationship ever being
aware that the messenger is involved in these other associations. For most
of us the assumption is that we are the only one that is being communicated
with and the messenger is solely focused on us. There are some obvious
downsides to this aspect of cyberspace, with deception in online dating (e.g.
Whitty, 2013; Whitty and Buchanan, 2012) being one of the more obvious
examples. The online romance scam has recently emerged as part of this
capacity for social multiplicity. In this fraud, criminals will seek out
individuals via online dating sites and initiate a relationship with them with
the primary aim of defrauding the victim of large amounts of money. As
Whitty and Buchanan (2012) noted, the damage encountered by victims of
this type of crime isn’t just financial but also psychological, as many
believe they are actually engaged directly in a relationship with someone
whom they trust.
Recordability
Questions to Consider
When was the last time you sat down with your friends in a social
environment and turned on a recording device so that you had a
record of your interactions? When did you last pause mid-
conversation to record the interactions you were having with your
friends in your notebook or journal?
It would be very surprising to find anyone doing this in the offline world
unless there was a specific requirement to do so (e.g. in the context of
police interviews or research). Very rarely do we record our daily
conversations, instead relying more upon our capacity to remember to
provide us with the important aspects of our daily lives. In contrast, our
interactions within cyberspace are presented as being different in terms of
their sense of permanence. The technology that we use to exchange ideas
and have online discussions also provides us with a unique opportunity to
record and reflect upon these interactions long after they have happened. In
essence, these online documents then become the record of the interactions
themselves, offering a sense of permanence and detail that is lacking in the
offline environment. Such a process can often cause a variety of issues,
particularly where those interactions come to light in later life and where
they no longer reflect the current views of the individual. This is more
apparent in teenagers who have little regard for aspects of their digital
privacy, leaving their online lives open to all to see for ever (Madden et al.,
2007, 2013)
Media Disruption
The technologies through which we engage in our activities in cyberspace
are never one hundred per cent reliable. We experience the annoying rolling
circle that indicates the current stream we are watching is being buffered
and then the fragility of mobile phone signals. The unreliability of
technology means that our interactions can easily be disrupted due to
failure, malfunction or damage. This can in turn have serious psychological
consequences for the individual, again demonstrating the emotive aspect of
cyberspace. Being cut off from cyberspace can lead to feelings of loss,
anger and frustration, particularly when so many of us are dependent on
technology to keep them connected and abreast of current events. This
element is demonstrated in the emerging phenomenon of fear of missing out
(FoMO; Przybylski et al., 2013), where an individual experiences
psychological distress when they are unable to gain access to aspects of
social media or the digital environment. The individual may also experience
aspects of anxiety and withdrawal in situations where they fail to get a
response to a message sent due to a failure in the Internet. FoMO will be
discussed in more detail in Chapter 11 when we explore the impact of
addiction to technology and its potential impact on cognition.
Summary
So what can we take from this introductory chapter? Well, the most
important point to make is that cyberspace as a concept is not a static and
technologically-driven environment. Instead technology should be seen as a
secondary and almost redundant aspect to our experiences in cyberspace,
with the digital devices being used simply as tools and access points; it is
not the technology that is important, but more the experiences they afford
us. Aligned with this is the essential ingredient that brings cyberspace into
being – the aspect of human interaction. Cyberspace is a psychologically-
driven environment that relies heavily upon the capacity of the individual to
make sense of it using a number of cognitive processes. Without the
capacity for individuals to have this meta-physical presence, cyberspace
would be devoid of interaction and lack the depth of social interaction with
which we are currently so familiar. It is only through our mental processes
that cyberspace can become a reality.
So what next? In the next chapter we will be exploring the basic elements
that make up human cognition, which will then lead us into an exploration
of how we engage in these activities in cyberspace. Aligned to this is
showing how being online may also be having an impact on how these
cognitive processes are being deployed, with key findings from research
being presented to support the changing face of human cognition in the
light of digital technology. Again the material is not presented to shock,
petrify and pander to the creation of a moral panic, but more to allow the
reader a capacity to understand that technology, even when its use is taken
for granted, can and will have an impact on us as human information
processors.

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2 The Human Information Processor
Learning Aims and Objectives
In this chapter you will:
gain a basic understanding of the key concepts that drive the
exploration of human cognition;
explore the information-processing framework in the context of
cognitive psychology;
understand the machine–mind metaphor and its implications for
understanding the way in which we think.
Overview
The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the key concepts
that govern our understanding of human cognition. The material here
should be viewed as a basic reference point from which to start to explore
the fundamentals of this massive area. These will in turn be discussed in
more depth during the coming chapters alongside an exploration of recent
research that has investigated how these processes are being used, or
potentially altered due to our online lives. Importantly the aim isn’t to cover
every aspect of cognition, as this would require a whole book and there are
many good books already in existence that can do this better than I could
ever hope to. There are some fundamental principles that will guide the
discussion, so this is where we shall begin.
What Are the Core Assumptions of the Cognitive
Psychology Approach?
As the context for our exploration focuses directly on aspects of cognition it
seems logical that we establish the ground rules from here on in. The
exploration of human cognitive processes is the central focus of the
cognitive psychologist, who for the most part is interested in exploring the
myriad mental processes that subsume our daily activities. Ashcraft and
Radvansky (2013) handily make reference to three clearly outlined
assumptions that are core to the cognitive psychology paradigm:
1. Mental processes do exist: Cognitive psychology expresses a scientific
interest in human mental activities and processes. The basic
assumption, in contrast to other approaches such as that of
 behaviourism, is that mental processes do exist, and they are key in our
understanding of human behaviour.
2. Mental processes can be studied: Cognitive psychologists believe that
objective, scientific study of mental processes is a real possibility.
They attempt to unravel complex questions using methods that are
both scientific and reliable, and that can be repeated a number of times
to yield the same results.
3. Active information processors: Humans are viewed as active
information processors constantly searching their environment for new
pieces of information to assimilate. This is in stark contrast to those
who follow the behaviourist approach, viewing humans as being
passive and inactive and waiting for a stimulus to occur.
I am interested in both exploring and understanding how the use of digital
technology serves to shape our cognitive processes, as well as exploring the
nature of those being deployed when we are online. So from this
perspective the first two assumptions of cognitive psychology play a crucial
role in this. If we don’t acknowledge that mental processes exist, there is no
point in talking about cognition and the impact technology is having upon
them – we may as well not bother, go home and have a nice piece of cake
and a cup of tea. In stark contrast to early behaviourist approaches exposed
by individuals such as Watson (1913), Skinner (1974) and Thorndike
(1898) who would ignore these mental processes, cognitive psychology can
provide us with the basis to explore these. If we can explore them, they can
be studied, measured and compared so we can get a feeling of whether and
how digital technology is affecting these processes. The latter tenet of
cognitive psychology is also critically important to us when we are
exploring the impact of digital technology on cognition itself. Humans are
not passive, and are hardwired to explore their environment as well as the
unique stimulus contained within it. The Internet and digital technology
now offer an infinite number of ways for the human to engage in
information processing, and our engagement and clamour for new
experiences is perhaps one of the fundamental reasons why the Internet
engages us so much.
The Mind–Machine Analogy
We often use analogies to make more complex activities or actions easier to
understand by using a real-world example to help. Psychologists are no
different and often use various analogies to describe abstract concepts or
processes that underpin our day-to-day activities. Cognitive psychology
adopted the mind‒machine analogy to help map human cognitive processes
onto the functioning of a system or computer. The underpinnings of this
approach had their foundation in the early work of pioneering theorists such
as Shannon and Weaver (1949), who had begun to explore how
mathematical models could be used to understand the operation of
communication systems. Known as information theory, this provided the
basis for the information-processing approach to human cognition that we
know and love today. The important thing about information theory is that it
began to make psychologists change the way they viewed human cognition
in a pretty radical way. The emerging view was that mind could be treated
as an information processing system, akin to the communication systems
proposed in Shannon and Webster’s work. From this perspective any
stimulus we encounter is viewed as an input that goes into an internal
system. This internal representation of that stimulus can then be encoded in
a number of ways and moved around the system. The movement around the
system could lead to the potential for further operations to be conducted on
the information, which could in turn lead to an output from the system.
Such an output in the context of human cognition would be a directly
observable behaviour that we could measure and record.
At around the same time Shannon and Weaver were exploring the concept
of information theory, another development provided a further potential
source of analogy. In the early 1950s, as a progression from early
developments made during the Second World War as part of the Allied
efforts to break the code of Axis forces, scientists developed the early
antecedents to our digital age. Many of the concepts we now take for
granted in the context of computer technology were just being designed and
built. During this time a variety of psychologists saw the applicability of
such new technology to the functioning of the human mind and, combined
with the work by Shannon and Weaver, the potential to use the new and
exciting realm of computers as a way of visualising how our mind works
was born.
If we take apart the mind‒machine analogy and use the notion of a
computer as the ‘machine’ element, the computer is seen to have a series of
functionally separate components that perform specific jobs. The analogy to
human cognitive processing should be fairly obvious, but the idea is that
these separate components can be mapped onto mental processes with the
basic premise that different parts of the mind are dedicated to different
tasks, such as appreciating music, doing mental arithmetic and
understanding language. The basic elements of the computer metaphor are
highlighted in ‘The Basics of the Computer Metaphor’ focus box, with the
most important aspect being that control can be programmed into the
system. This aspect of ‘control’ could in turn be linked to the mental
process of learning (we need to learn how to do things, so these are
essentially programs) and this information also needs to be stored and
retrieved at some point (Quinlan and Dyson, 2008). This notion of
programmed control also brings with it another aspect that is central to the
computational metaphor of the mind but also human cognition – that of a
need to store and retrieve data that is represented in an internal memory
system.
Some cognitive psychologists take the analogy one stage further and have
explored the operations of programmable computers and that of the human
mind (e.g. Johnson-Laird, 1983; Pinker, 1997). In the instances where such
strict comparisons have been made, researchers suggest that the actual
computational processes being conducted by computers can also be linked
to mental processes (Fodor, 1980).
Focus Box: The Basics of the Computer Metaphor
So let’s take this one step further with an exploration of the key
components that make up the computer metaphor as it relates to
human cognitive processes. Quinlan and Dyson (2008)
identified the key components as follows:
The central processing unit (CPU) contains an arithmetical
unit (which allows it to perform calculations to produce an
output) and a control unit (which allows it to integrate
information from a number of sources and identify which
processes to carry out and when).
The program memory is the memory that is related to the
processes being conducted by the CPU, so may include a
program for a complex calculation.
The data memory is the memory for information that is
needed to perform a calculation or to store the result of the
calculation so this can be used later on.
The data bus is essentially a shuttle that transfers
information from one point to another and is controlled
 directly by the CPU according to the current demands of
the system.
The Formality Condition
Question for Consideration
Given the evidence from research, is the mind nothing more than a
biological computer?
Cognitive psychologists have explored this question in some detail and
many have expressed a degree of caution when jumping to conclusions
about making parallels between humans and biological computers (Fodor,
1980). If we accept the computational metaphor of the human mind, then it
comes with some conditions we may find hard to fulfil, primarily the notion
that computers and minds are both machines that follow rules. It is at this
point we have to stand back and realise the point at which strictly applying
the computational metaphor starts to run into difficulty. The concept that is
important here is the notion of formality – a computer is a ‘formal’ system
as it operates according to a set of representations that it compares
according to the form they take. If you ask a computer to make a
comparison between two things it will conduct a process that essentially
checks off each part of the pattern with the corresponding part from the
other pattern. Essentially it is seeing whether the form of the symbols
matches those contained in the other representation. This reliance on a
formal system means that the computer is only making comparisons based
on the overt physical representations presented to it and not on what the
symbol means. If we enter a series of binary digits into a computer such as
0000010101 it will perform a specific action, and if we enter 0000010111 it
will perform another one. The important aspect is that the computer has no
actual understanding of the meaning attached to these two symbols. This is
what Fodor termed the formality condition and it contrasts clearly with what
we know about humans. We have thoughts and feelings about certain
things, particularly when it comes to aspects from the real world. We are
not functioning in terms of formality when we choose a pair of shoes over
another pair because they make us feel good about ourselves – if we were
using formality we would be choosing them based solely on a comparison
between size, shape and function. Searle (1980) was one of the researchers
who argued that no amount of computer programming, irrespective of its
complexity, could help us understand how humans create what it termed
intentionality, or the feelings and thoughts we associate with real world
concepts.
Cognitive Processes
The next section aims to give the reader a very broad overview of some of
the key concepts that we will be exploring when we talk about cognitive
processes in cyberspace. The emphasis here is on trying to present the key
elements that will guide later discussions in the following chapters. It is
hard to introduce one cognitive process in isolation, so much of this section
presents the cross-overs where they potentially exist.
Human Attention
Whenever I ask my students an essay question on attention, I will usually
get the following quote firmly implanted somewhere in the first paragraph
of the text:
[Attention] is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid
form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects
or trains of thought … It implies withdrawal from some things in order
to deal effectively with others. (James, 1890: 403)
This quote is taken from the work of William James, an individual who has
a special place in the history of cognitive psychology, being one of the first
to begin to theorise about the underlying processes that make up the
paradigm. James’s quote points to the fundamental purpose of attention,
that being a mechanism that allows us to focus on one clear element or task.
Similarly, we also need something that helps us reject unwanted or
irrelevant information that may otherwise interfere with the task we are
currently doing, or conversely take away valuable cognitive resources from
something we should be doing to something that doesn’t. Attention is the
mechanism that is proposed to fulfil all these requirements, but there are
key limitations to how far it can be stretched.
The concept of human attention in the context of Information Processing is
extensive, with the literature stretching back to the foundations of cognitive
psychology in the early 1950s. Attention is seen as the mechanism that is
used by individuals to select and focus on important stimuli in the context
of other irrelevant information. At one time it was thought that attention
was the same as consciousness, so in order to process a piece of information
the individual had to be aware of it. It is more widely accepted that some
processing of information could still take place without us directly being
aware of it, which gave rise to the notion of pre-conscious or subliminal
processing. The scope of this report places these aspects outside of its
parameters, but the reader should be aware that such processes can take
place and that individuals do not necessarily have to ‘see’ everything
conscious for them to have an effect on behaviour.
For the most part researchers agree that attention is linked directly to a
finite resource, meaning that we only have a limited capacity to select and
attend to information from our current environment (Broadbent, 1957;
Hahn et al., 2008). Attention acts in one of two key ways. Primarily, it can
act as a filter that determines what aspect of the environment will be
attended to by the individual. Second, it can act as a management system
placing constraints on which task can be performed at any one time
(Wickens, 1981; Wickens and Carswell, 2006) The literature from cognitive
psychology makes a variety of distinctions in relation to attention – for
instance it can be automatic or controlled, and it can be selective or divided
attention.
Selective Attention
Selective attention is pretty much what it says on the tin – essentially you
select an appropriate thing or piece of stimulus from the plethora of other
things you have going on within your immediate environment. This will
mean that all of the available resources can be devoted directly to that
current task or stimulus. When we are trying to achieve a specific goal, it is
important for us to be able to focus directly on those stimuli that relate
specifically to the goal we have in hand, whilst also being able to block out
irrelevant information that might distract use (Lavie et al., 2004).
Divided Attention
The notion of divided attention will become even more important when we
move on to discuss aspects of multitasking (Chapter 6) and task switching
(Chapter 7). Divided attention makes reference to the action of doing two or
more things at any one time, and requires the individual to ‘split’ their
attention effectively between these two tasks. Divided attention means that
the individual has to carefully allocate resources between the different sets
of stimuli that might be the current focus(es) of the tasks in hand. The
important part here is that we cannot process all of the available
information at the same time, or in parallel, so there are associated costs for
dividing attention (Pashler, 2000).
Focus Box: Divided Attention in the Real World
The growth of the mobile phone, and more recently the
smartphone, is something that has been the focus of many
researchers, particularly in the context of road traffic safety.
Many researchers have noted that using a mobile phone,
irrespective of whether the driver is using a hands-free device or
holding the phone in their hand, can cause significant disruption
in driving performance (Bianchi and Phillips, 2005; Drews et
al., 2009; Strayer and Drews, 2006, 2007; Strayer et al., 2004).
In the research conducted by Strayer et al. (2004) participants
were asked to engage in driving under divided attention
conditions using a simulator. One group was asked to have a
conversation on a mobile phone whilst another group simply
completed the driving task. Right after the driving session
participants were asked whether they had seen one of two
objects during the activity as well presenting a rating for these in
relation to road safety. In the mobile phone-using group there
were fewer objects remembered, demonstrating that as their
attention had been divided there were fewer resources available
to encode this critical information.
Research has noted that in some instances the degree of similarity between
the two tasks being completed can influence the level of disruption.
Performance is generally better where the two tasks are dissimilar in terms
of the underlying systems they require; for example, reading and listening
to music usually causes less disruption than trying to speak out loud and
rehearse a telephone number at the same time. Wickens (1984) noted that
task interference is at its highest when:
both tasks share the need for the same modality (e.g. visual, auditory);
there is a need to use the same processing stage (e.g. at the point of
input, the requirement for internal processing or output);
they rely heavily on the same memory codes (verbal or visual);
the response required is very similar (such as driving and trying to dial
a mobile phone).
A very early example of the type of research that explored performance for
divided attention is an experiment by McLeod (1977). In this experiment
participants were asked to perform a tracking task, for which they had to
keep a small dot (which would move randomly) positioned on a cross
presented on a computer screen using a mouse controller. Participants were
also asked to identify when a target tone was presented in their headphones
in one of two ways. They either spoke the word ‘now’ when they heard the
tone, or they raised the hand they were not using on the tracking task. It was
noted that performance on the tracking task was significantly worse when
there was a high response similarity, such as when both tasks required the
use of motor function (e.g. raising the hand and tracking the dot on the
screen).
Automatic versus Controlled Processing
When we first learn to do something, particularly when that thing involves a
procedural skill such as riding a bike, it can be very hard to do. We are often
faced with an uphill struggle to improve both our skill and level of co-
ordination. Balance, direction and visual scanning all have to be
accomplished in parallel if we want to be able to ride a bike. My own
experience of riding my first bike without stabilising wheels was recounted
to me recently by my parents, and of which I have a vague recollection of
ending up in a neighbour’s bush. Fast forward several years later, and I
regularly complete rides of more than 60 miles (for fun!). Part of the
process for learning a skill is the degree to which it can become automated,
and for which we have very little conscious control over. This can be both a
positive process and a negative one. For instance, allowing a regularly
occurring skill to be taken over automatically allows the individual capacity
to be able to do other things, such as being able to chat to a fellow biker,
look at the trees or avoid potholes! Automated processes can occur very fast
and interfere very little with other cognitive activities and belong to the
non-declarative, procedural memories highlighted in Figure 2.2 (Shiffrin
and Schneider, 1984).
Attention and Memory
The link between attention and memory is one that is fundamental to human
cognition. The implications for not paying attention are pretty clear – if you
aren’t paying attention to something, then it won’t be perceived.
Consequently, if a piece of information is not perceived then in turn it will
not lay down a residual trace within memory, essentially never to be
recalled again. The two concepts are intertwined in various sections of this
book, and there are some core aspects to the terminology and the structure
of memory that will guide the reader through this discussion.
The notion of memory in the context of cognitive psychology has been
divided into two hypothetical constructs, these being short-term and long-
term memory. All of these structures have their own specific set of
limitations and processes associated with them; short-term memory (STM)
is a time and capacity limited storage area that is capable of holding
approximately seven to nine pieces of information at any one time (Miller,
1956). If information is not continually repeated or rehearsed, then it faces
the risk of being lost through a process of decay. Other processes, such as
interference from other information set down in previous memories or
attempts to recall older information being impaired by the presence of new
information, can also affect the material stored in STM.
Working Memory
In more recent years the notion of STM has been conceptualised in terms of
a ‘working’ memory (WM) (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). The framework for
WM highlights that STM is not just a simple area for retaining information.
It includes a variety of specific processes and further sub-stores that allow
the individuals to analyse information before it is either lost or transferred
into the more permanent long-term memory (LTM) store.
The working memory model (see Figure 2.1) broadly comprises four key
components, each of which assumes a different role in the context of
memory. For example, the central executive is the part of working memory
that governs what we pay attention to, as well as managing the other two
‘slave systems’ within the model. These two slaves systems each have
specialised roles according to the type of material they can manipulate. For
instance, the phonological loop is assumed to hold both verbal and acoustic
information and includes an articulatory rehearsal mechanism where things
we are trying to say are stored before we talk. On the other hand, the visual-
spatial sketchpad assumes the role of maintaining and manipulating
visuospatial representations, as well as perhaps also being able to store
kinaesthic memories such as touch (Baddeley, 2000a, 2000b). The inclusion
of the episodic buffer was something that came after the original model was
presented by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) in an attempt to account for further
findings from research. The episodic buffer serves to act as a limited
capacity storage system that temporarily holds and integrates information
from any number of sources. Control for this system is presumed to be the
responsibility of the central executive, and the episodic label makes
reference to the notion that it can hold ‘episodes’ of our activities, and
information can be integrated from across these episodes. The importance
of this model in terms of the way in which we view a memory system that
not only allows information to be stored but also acted on at the same time
cannot be underestimated. As we will see later on, working memory
presents a potential framework for explaining a variety of issues related
directly to multitasking and interruptions alongside the notion that
individual differences can also exist in the capacity of each of the
subsystems.
Figure 2.1 The Working Memory Model

Source: Baddeley (2000a)

Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory has been viewed as a more permanent storage system
that has been further divided into two theoretical sub-stores in order to
differentiate between the distinct types of memory. The overarching
distinction is that between declarative and non-declarative memories, which
refer to the level at which such information is available to conscious
awareness. Declarative memories are those that can freely recall and report
the result in terms of a concrete statement about that memory as long as
relevant cues to those memories can trigger results in the memory being
retrieved. In contrast, non-declarative memories are those that remain
outside of conscious awareness but still exert an influence upon behaviour.
An example of this type of memory could be a procedural memory,
analogous to an instructional memory that tells the individual how to
perform certain motor skills, such as walking and writing.
The focus in the context of the current discussion will be directly on
declarative memories as these are the ones that most directly impact on day-
to-day online lives. Research has highlighted a finer-grained sub-division
according to the memories contained in declarative memory: these are
semantic memory and episodic memory. Perhaps the most important type
for discussion here is that of semantic memory, or memory for meaning.
Semantic memory is information directly related to real-world factual
information (Tulving, 1972). If an individual is asked to report what colour
the sky is, or what their pet is called, then they would be accessing semantic
memory in order to find the relevant answer. Episodic memory is
information relating to events or ‘episodes’ in an individual’s life, and is an
autobiographical history of activities up to the present (Tulving, 1972).
Taking the example above, if an individual was then asked the name of their
first pet, this would require access to episodic memory.
Figure 2.2 The Structure of Long-Term Memory

Source: Squire et al. (1993)

Learning
There are a wide variety of theories related to the way in which humans
learn information, including those that are based on aspects of operant and
classical conditioning. These theories, although relevant to the field of
learning, remain out of the scope of the current discussion where the focus
will be more directly on those based in cognitive psychology. In the context
of the cognitive approach to learning, the process of learning involves the
transfer of new information into either existing mental structures or the
creation of new ones (Anderson, 1995). These mental structures are referred
to as schema, and are essentially the building blocks of our knowledge.
Each schema represents a mental rulebook or script that contains all the
specific knowledge we have about a particular topic. So, for example, our
schema for ‘how to make cheese on toast’ would include all we know about
that topic, from the type of cheese, how it melts, how to use an oven or a
grill, what temperature setting works best and so forth. Accordingly,
cognitive psychologists have also noted that anything that serves to impact
on the processing of information so that it is prevented from entering these
schemata will have a negative impact on learning. If new information is
disrupted whilst it is being encoded into these abstract mental structures it
can be lost or distorted, therefore leading to weaker retention (Anderson,
1995).
Learning and Cognitive Load
The research on factors that can influence how we as humans integrate and
interpret information from complex visual environments (such as the
Internet) highlights three forms of cognitive load. Cognitive load (Sweller,
1994) is often used to describe a burden that is being placed upon the
individual when they are committing resources to a particular task. In this
instance, in the context of talking about learning, Sweller (1994) assigned
cognitive load to three categories:
1. Intrinsic load: This is the load that comes from how hard the task is,
something that is an inherent factor related to the material itself.
Intrinsic load is usually a direct reflection of the level of difficulty that
is associated with the material or information that is being learned. For
instance, for most of us doing the calculation of ‘2 + 2’ would have a
lower intrinsic load than a more complex algebraic calculation.
Intrinsic cognitive load can also be linked directly to the number of
‘elements’ or things we have to do whilst learning that thing, with the
higher number of elements increasing cognitive load.
2. Extraneous load: This is the load that comes from the thing that is
delivering the information that has to be learned, and is often the result
of the design of that system. For instance, when we are presented with
both auditory and visual information together, extraneous cognitive
load is low as this allows us the chance to spread information capture
across multiple modalities rather than one single stream of
information. This means we have less chance of missing something in
 contrast to something that is being presented through just visual or
auditory information alone.
3. Germane cognitive load: This is the effort we have to exert as a direct
result of the learning process itself. So this would include the
integration of new information into existing schema or the creation of
new ones to help hold that information. As we learn more on a specific
topic the germane load for the task actually reduces because the cost of
adding new material to the existing set of information is reduced,
meaning the task in hand becomes automated as the schema grows in
size. This has the knock-on effect of also reducing intrinsic cognitive
load as we have more knowledge to devote to the topic (although
algebra never seems to get any easier!). As resources taken up by
intrinsic load are reduced, we are freed up to do other things that might
be related (or unrelated) to the task in hand. An example of this is
reading. When we start out learning to read, it is hard and we have a
high level of intrinsic load, which may be matched by high extraneous
load (most of the time we learn reading by looking at words) –
germane load is also high as we are adding new information to basic
schema. As we progress, we become more competent, thus giving us
the chance to both read and listen to music, or read and watch TV.
Researchers have noted that extraneous cognitive load can also be created
when information is presented in an inappropriate way (too much
information on a PowerPoint slide for example!). Similarly it can also come
from a requirement to perform a series of tasks or actions that are
completely irrelevant to the task that is being learned (Ayres and Sweller,
2005). This process is pretty easily demonstrated, particularly where we
have a situation in which the individual is being presented with visual
information from two very different spatial locations. This requires the
individual to divide their attention between two points whilst also trying to
integrate this information.
Human Decision-Making
Research on aspects of decision-making in the context of information
processing has distinguished a variety of mechanisms individuals use in
order to reach a decision. When individuals perform a search on the Internet
they have to make a variety of decisions based not only on the information
they have received, but also on the information they have already obtained.
There is also a conscious comparison between these two aspects, and a
decision as to whether or not the new information meets the current goals
and objective has to be made (Dinet et al., 2012; Maglio and Barrett, 1997).
The decision process individual human users go through differs from the
very systematic way in which a search engine will determine which results
to include in the response to a query; here the decisions are based on a
logical series of processes that conform to the notion of an algorithm. An
algorithm is bounded to mathematical principles of logic, and for all intents
and purposes will provide a clear answer if the rule is applied correctly. In
contrast, the user will have to make an individual decision about what
information to select from the returned search, and indeed which of the
links presented to follow. If users were to implement an algorithmic
approach to analysing each of the available links, there would be two clear
disadvantages to such a process. The average search for information on a
given topic may return an excessive amount of information, some of which
may be completely irrelevant to the current task in hand. In order to provide
a systematic approach the searcher would have to process all the available
information to make a logically informed decision about what information
to keep and what to ignore. Such a process is time-consuming and more
importantly a drain on cognitive resources; often individuals need to gain
information through online searches quickly and efficiently (e.g. the time of
the next train, weather information, current new information). Therefore
humans, in terms of information processing and decision-making, do not
process all the available information in a systematic and logical manner, but
instead rely on a series of support mechanisms that aid decisions in
uncertainty, and where there is an abundance of information to process.
These mechanisms, or – as they are commonly referred to in the literature
on decision-making – ‘heuristics’, are learned ‘rules-of-thumb’ that allow
individuals the luxury of a close approximation to a correct decision but
without the associated cost of having to go through all the available
information (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974).
Simon (1957) was one of the earliest researchers to suggest the notion of
the human information processor working in the context of a ‘bounded
rationality’ when it came to making decisions. This concept suggested that
humans are capable of making accurate decisions but these are limited (or
bounded) by the amount of information they have available at that current
time, as well as the restrictions placed on limited cognitive resources. From
the IP perspective, any decision-making activity is seen as being one that is
mentally draining in order for an accurate decision to be made (Payne and
Bettman, 2004; Wirth et al., 2007). If choices have to be made from a wide
number of potential alternatives then the individual has to use a number of
strategies that require complex processing. The end result is the most
accurate decision based on the available information, but this comes at a
cost in terms of the amount of time and resources that have been expended
(Wirth et al., 2007). Gigerenzer (2004) suggested that the use of these more
effortful decision-making strategies are no more likely to present a better
end solution than those that are less time-consuming and more cognitively
efficient. In this context the simpler strategies are seen to satisfy (Simon,
1957) the need to make a decision based upon the available information an
individual has to hand in the most convenient time frame. Here individuals
are making an unconscious acceptance that the results obtained through
these heuristic processes are less than perfect but will do for their individual
needs.
Summary
The material presented here will form the basis for our wider discussions
throughout the rest of the book. I will be introducing more specific detail
for the relevant topics in relation to cybercognition as we progress, but as it
stands this chapter should stand you in good stead for understanding some
of the wider concepts being introduced later. The important elements to
remember are that human beings, when we talk about cognition, have a set
of finite resources at their disposal. The information processing system that
is used to conceptualise human cognition makes a clear statement about
this, and where these limited resources run low or run out we start to
encounter reductions in performance accuracy and efficiency (Eysenck et
al., 2007). The second point to make is that humans don’t like to spend a lot
of time thinking about things – if there is a short cut to a solution, then we
will take it, as long as it gets us close enough to the intended goal or
solution. This isn’t being lazy, but is rather a process via which we conserve
our cognitive resources by relying heavily on past experience to govern our
future decisions, particularly in instances where we haven’t encountered a
particular problem before.
In the context of our current focus, the use and manipulation of cognition in
cyberspace, there are some obvious benefits for the use of digital
technology. When we are talking about cognitive resources, some
researchers believe that these may hold the key to expanding what we
already have, hence removing these limitations (Prensky, 2009). There is
also evidence that we are developing and using a variety of heuristic-based
strategies when it comes to searching for information on the Internet (Lau
and Coiera, 2007; White and Iivonen, 1999) as well as making decisions for
what information is credible (Fogg et al., 2001).

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3 The Population(s) of Cyberspace
Learning Aims and Objectives
To introduce the theoretical divide that exists between the
generations according to their digital skills and cognitive
abilities;
to explore the evidence base for such a position;
to highlight the current issues with such a distinction.
Overview
The aim of the previous chapter was to establish the basics of cyberspace
alongside a further exploration of the psychology that sits behind these
experiences. In this chapter the aim is to produce a current snapshot of the
who, how and what of Internet use. A number of researchers have
continually suggested that cyberspace is inhabited by two distinct groups
based on their level of skill and engagement with digital technology. One of
the first authors to write about this, Prensky (2001), suggested that this
categorical distinction can in turn be related to differences in the way
individuals are thinking and processing information. It is proposed that the
newer generations occupying the Internet think in a fundamentally different
way from the generations preceding them. Prensky used the label ‘digital
natives’ to describe those individuals who have never known a world
without digital technology. Other authors have used labels such as the
‘Clickerati’ (Harel, 2002), ‘Net Generation’ (Tapscott, 1998) and
‘Screenagers’ (Rushkoff, 2006) to describe this same digitally embedded
group of individuals. According to the work by Prensky there is a capacity
for younger people to ‘think and process information fundamentally
differently from their predecessors (2001: 1). This trend is evident in the
myriad statistics that surround the use of the Internet and other digitally
connected devices. For instance, 9 per cent of US teenagers aged between
13 and 17 reported that they were going online daily, with 24 per cent of
these individuals reporting being online ‘almost constantly’ (Lenhart et al.,
2015). Furthermore, 75 per cent of those questioned had access to a
smartphone, with just 12 per cent having no mobile phone of any type.
Statistical trends aside, the anecdotal evidence relates a current moral panic
associated with the younger generation and their use of technology. For
instance Choudhury and McKinney (2013) noted the rise in a belief that the
young lack empathy and are passive, intellectually shallow and uncritical. It
is also suggested that due to the rise in the use of digital technology this
younger generation is also becoming desensitised to a variety of stimuli,
expressing symptoms that are bordering on those observed in the context of
individuals diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) (e.g. Chan and
Rabinowitz, 2006; Gentile et al., 2012; Yoo et al., 2004). So it appears that
the concerns of educators and parents map onto the findings from research
when it relates to issues with the growing digital generation and their
exuberant use of the technology. However, as with everything related to
research, this isn’t as clear-cut as it first seems.
Immigration Crisis Hits Cyberspace: Digital
Migrants and Digital Immigrants
In the context of Prensky’s work the digital generation possesses a unique
capacity: they are fluent in the language of cyberspace. Helsper and Eynon
(2010) defined the current generation of teenagers born after 1990 as
belonging to the second generation of digital natives. First-generation
digital natives are viewed as those who were born between 1983 and 1990.
In accordance with these distinctions, those who belong to these digitally
native generations have the capacity to use technology in a way that is
blended into their everyday lives without paying much conscious thought to
the actual use of that technology. They don’t need to learn how to use a
smartphone, send an email or post an image to Instagram as for this age
group it is all very much second nature. Rather than seeing technology as a
burden or a barrier, this generation see it as a tool via which a whole host of
activities can be engaged in. In stark contrast to this technologically
experienced group there sits another group, labelled as the ‘digital
immigrants’. This group is proposed to be older to and have witnessed the
development of technology, hence have known a time pre-Internet. From
this perspective this group is said to have migrated into cyberspace rather
than being born into it. Now this is not to say that digital immigrants are a
collection of technological luddites who have poor digital literacy and think
that the word ‘spam’ can just refer to tinned meat. It has been noted that
those who occupy this digital immigrant group are often more affluent, and
therefore can afford to be early adopters of the newest and shiniest digital
gadgets. Even though this caveat is accepted, it is still the case that the
digital immigrants, whilst having the capacity to adapt to and learn the new
culture that is cyberspace, still retain the same values and ways that belong
to the ‘old country’, the land before digital technology. These little
differences mean that the digital immigrants might be more likely to pick a
phone up and make a call rather than thinking about sending a text via
Whatsapp; they might look for a number of a local business in the telephone
directory rather than checking the information on Google or Yell.com. For
this generation, using technology comes as second nature, and therefore it is
important to bear such differences in mind when exploring the impact of
this technology on human cognition.
Can Culture Affect the Way in Which We Think?
There is some research precedence for Prensky’s claim that the culture in
which we are imbedded can drive the way in which we think. For example,
research by Nisbett et al. (2001) noted that those from East Asian cultures
have a tendency to think more holistically, and pay attention to the whole of
something rather than the individual parts of that thing or system. They also
use little in the way of formal logic, placing a heavier reliance on aspects of
dialectic reasoning (debate between two opposing groups or people). In
contrast, Westerners are more analytically biased and pay attention to
details or component parts, and use rules (including some aspects of formal
logic) to understand the behaviour of the thing that they are examining. So
the suggestion by Prensky that culture can have an important impact on
thought processes does have some resonance in the literature. Cyberspace
is, as we have explored in the first chapter, a digital environment that has its
own set of rules and social norms. As such, cyberspace presents itself as a
unique culture with such rules and social norms changing quickly, much
quicker than in the context of the offline world. The culture an individual is
embedded in does not just impact on what they are thinking about, but more
importantly the way in which they actually think. If the proposition of a
digital divide is actually a reality, then there is the possibility that those
engaged in cyberspace may indeed think differently compared with their
digital immigrant counterparts.
Losing the Capacity to Reflect?
According to Prensky those in the digitally native generation have lost one
very important ability, that being the capacity to reflect. To take a step back
for a moment, let’s think about the ability we are gifted in the process of
reflection. It is a process that will bug you, usually when you are going over
the things that you could have done rather than what was actually done. The
ability to reflect is an inherently important skill for humans as it also allows
us to see how we can improve in the future. If we lack the capacity for
reflection, then there is the possibility that we could be stuck in an ever-
repeating cycle of the same mistakes over and over again (think Groundhog
Day but without the humour of Bill Murray and the glorious romantic
overtones!).
Prensky proposes that in the high-volume, high-speed culture of cyberspace
individuals are finding less and less time to pause for objective reflection on
what they have done. This does have some connections with other work that
has been conducted on aspects of impulsivity, which will be discussed later
on in Chapters 6 and 7. The predominant argument is that for those
individuals engaged in digital technology, the displacement of other
activities that may teach reflective processes serves to make this process a
spiral of anti-reflection. The knock-on effect is that those who occupy the
digital native generation are more prone to making the same mistakes, and
these are repeated over and over again. The key premise for Prensky is that
there is a mismatch, particularly in the context of education, between those
who are in a position of instructing and those who are to be instructed. The
two cultures are inherently engrained in their own environments and
mechanisms of thinking, and as such there is a danger that neither will be
able to understand the other.
How Much Evidence Is There for the Digital
Divide?
Some of the suggestions made by Prensky, however, have been met with
disagreement by other researchers. According to Bennett et al. (2008) there
is no direct evidence to support Prensky’s claim that digital natives process
and use information in a different manner from those in the digital
immigrant group. As this appears as one of the most frequently repeated
distinctions in the context of the digital native and digital immigrant debate
it has been assumed that there would be substantial empirical evidence to
support this claim. However, Bennett et al. (2008) noted a complete dearth
of actual research upon which these assertions could be based. It would
appear that much of the earlier work by Prensky and Tapscott is based on
conjecture and anecdotal evidence. Indeed the authors would appear to
suggest that most of the people who have cited these differences between
the two generations have done so without actually exploring the empirical
evidence for such differences (Bennett et al., 2008). Hence, the suggestion
that there are these generational differences resulting in associated
differences in cognitive processes has given rise to research-based Chinese
whispers.
Bennett et al. (2008) focused upon mapping the complex interactions that
the younger generations are having with digital technology in an attempt to
identify whether such differences do actually exist. The argument that is
consistently touted by those forwarding the digital native/digital immigrant
dichotomy is that younger generations have spent more time engaged in the
use of digital technology, and therefore become ‘fluent in the digital
language of computers, video games and the Internet’ (Prensky, 2005: 8).
Bennett et al. (2008) noted that as engagement in digital environments was
so immersive, those in the younger digital native generation often do not
recognise technology as such, but rather see it as a tool. So from this
perspective, as alluded to at the start of this chapter, those who are digitally
native have the tendency to use technology as the thing they do something
with or with which they achieve an action, rather than exploring the
complete functionality of that device.
Of the research that was reviewed by Bennett et al. (2008) there was
evidence that a large proportion of the younger population was adept with
technology use, relying heavily on it for information gathering and
activities involving some form of communication. It was also noted that a
significant portion of this population does not have the advanced levels of
skills and understanding that would be expected if the notion of the digital
native is to be accepted. Bennett et al. (2008) further noted that the
generalised claims about skills and understanding of technology for the
digital natives only focuses on those who are technically adept. This, as a
consequence, fails to recognise a potential underclass of individuals who
may be completely disengaged from technology, or find themselves
challenged when attempting to engage in the digital environment. Bennett
et al.’s (2008) research noted that there may be as much variability in the
skills and abilities that exist within the digital native generation as there is
between the digital native and digital immigrant divide.
Another skill that is often presented as being a fundamental cornerstone of
the digital native population is their capacity to multitask at a level far in
advance of their digital immigrant peers. Brown (2000: 13) suggested that
‘todays kids are always “multiprocessing” – they do several things
simultaneously – listen to music, talk on the cell phone, and use the
computer, all at the same time’. What writers such as Prensky have
suggested is that digital natives are given certain cognitive affordances,
which makes them better accustomed to learning at high speed. This is
matched to a capacity for taking information from a widely distributed set
of sources whilst simultaneously being able to make interconnections
between associated items. Add to this a belief that this group also has an
advanced capacity for processing visually dynamic information, and we
have the perfect online information processor (Prensky, 2001). This latter
element is supposedly linked to the digital native’s experience in visually
rich environments presented by webpages and social networking sites.
Brown (2000) further suggested such enhanced skills lead digital natives to
have a preference for more discovery-based learning. This process allows
them to explore information and actively test their ideas in real time, which
in turn also serves to create more knowledge through experience. This is
seen as a stark contrast to individuals being passive receptors of information
being presented to them (Bennett et al., 2008).
As has been reiterated several times in this section, there is a serious lack of
any consistent empirical research upon which these assertions can be
founded. The notion of multitasking will be discussed later in Chapter 6,
and is not a skill that solely resides in the context of the current digital
native generation. From a historical perspective it was not too long ago that
parents argued with children who were supposedly engaged in homework
but also had both the radio and television on in the same room. The
literature on the digital skill divide also presents the notion that multitasking
is a ‘good’ skill. This position may actually be erroneous, especially when
we explore this in the context of divided attention and task completion.
Evidence suggests that higher levels of multitasking can lead to a greater
degree of distractibility alongside a loss of focus, potentially leading to
cognitive overload and reduced efficiency (David et al., 2013; Pashler,
2000; Rosen, 2008; Wood et al., 2012).
Are We Failing to See the Finer Detail?
The generalisation about an entire generation and the way in which a group
of individuals learns fails to acknowledge the wealth of information from
cognitive psychology that notes differences in cognitive processes with age
groups (Bennett et al., 2008). This aspect of human cognition is well
demonstrated in research by Cowan et al. (1999), who noted that the storage
capacity of short-term memory actually increases with age. In order to put
this into context, the capacity of short-term memory is critically important
when we need to maintain information for limited periods of time, and
crucially it has a fast decay rate. The larger the capacity of short-term
memory, the more information an individual can retain from their
environment. This in turn allows us to manipulate larger quantities of
information without the need to return to the source of that information
repeatedly. The argument presented by researchers such as Bennett et al.
(2008) is that these aspects of individual differences are being lost when the
broad label of ‘digital native’ is applied to an entire developing generation.
The issue is that the application of such a label would make the assumption
that all of those included in this category have the same (or similar) level of
capacity for certain cognitive functions irrespective of their age group
(Bennett et al., 2008).
A further assertion that accompanies the digital native debate is that they
are given special status in the context of their learning style, something that
also comes under the scrutiny of Bennett et al. (2008). They raise the valid
point that to assume all individuals within an entire generation share the
same learning style is as problematic as the issue of cognitive capacity
raised previously. Research has already noted that there can be differences
in learning styles across cultures (Joy and Kolb, 2009), so Prensky’s
suggestion that this could be the case for digital natives isn’t a big leap of
faith. However, other research has also noted that learning styles are
dynamic in nature and can change over a short period of time (Mitchell et
al., 2015), meaning that they might not be as stable as Prensky originally
proposed. They are also unique in nature and often fail to be applicable to a
full class of individuals, an issue that is particularly salient when they are
being applied to an entire generation (Bennett et al., 2008). Learning styles
are also adaptable in nature and can change according to both the task
environment and the needs of the current situation. For example, Biggs
(2003) noted that individuals have the flexibility to adopt a particular
process based on what has worked well before in that particular situation.
This work again highlights the issue of applying a ‘one size fits all’ metric
that is being used to view an entire population. The key point is that to do
so, particularly when applying these to an entire generation, fails to
recognise each of these individual differences.
Helsper and Enyon (2010) further questioned the evidence for the
distinction between these two generational classes. Previous research does
agree that there are distinct differences between age groups according to the
amount of digital technology that is being consumed, with the younger age
groups occupying a high-use group (Cheong, 2008; Dutton and Helsper,
2007). There is another deeper issue here, and that is that there are also
significant differences according to the way in which the younger
generation is using this technology and also how effective they are in its use
(Helsper and Enyon, 2010). For instance, research presented by DiMaggio
and Hargittai (2001) suggests that the focus should not be on those who
have access to technology and use it, but rather on the growing inequality in
being able to use it. This is a fascinating perspective and suggests that even
though individuals may have the necessary tools to engage in the digital
environment they may lack the essential skills to enable them to use these
effectively. This digital divide within the same generation may also be an
issue with access to the technology as well, where not having access to
digital technology also prevents an individual from engaging in the same
experience their peers are having (Helsper and Enyon, 2010). Helsper and
Enyon (2010) place emphasis on the need to understand that there is greater
complexity and diversity at play in terms of technology uptake, use and
skill set of new digital technology than the digital migrant versus digital
native labels afford. They also suggest that it is important to further
understanding the extent to which differences in technology use and the
impact of this on changes in cognition are based directly on generational
aspects, or more so on the consumption of digital technology. In terms of
the original distinctions made by Prensky and Tapscott, the former viewed
the importance of age as the determiner of the digital divide whereas the
latter emphasised exposure and experience with technology. Others, such as
Oblinger and Oblinger (2005), note that neither age nor experience can be
used effectively to define the inclusion in the net generation.
Helsper and Enyon (2010) aimed to explore the digital immigrant and
native discussion to see whether being a digital native could accurately be
determined by the age of the individual. There are several key issues that
the authors discuss that mainly relate to how both ‘experience with
technology’ and also ‘breadth of use’ can influence the application of the
digital native label. For instance, you could be a teenager who belongs to
the digital native population (according to age) but may not have experience
in using technology in terms of length of time. Similarly, you could be an
older individual who has not grown up as a digital native, but may have
many hours, experience of using this type of technology. In the same regard
the concept of breadth of use explores how much the Internet is an
integrated part of the individual’s daily life, and is independent of both age
and experience with it.
The information on generation differences presented above does support
some aspects of the digital native debate, in so far as those who belong to
first- and second-generation digital native groups are more likely to be
using a wider variety of technology but are also more likely to be Internet
users. Helsper and Enyon (2010) noted that the largest drop in Internet use
is in the over 55 age category, which would imply the majority of those who
are parents or educators of the digital natives are not frequent users of the
Internet. The youngest digital natives (those in the second generation) are
those living in households with the widest variety of digital technology at
their disposal. They demonstrate a preference to use the Internet as their
primary access point in order to facilitate a wider number of activities in
comparison with individuals from other age groups. This group also
presented a higher self-reported propensity for multitasking and relied on
the Internet when exploring information for use in the context of scholarly
activities such as homework or coursework.
Helsper and Enyon (2010) also noted a key difference in the type of
activities each age group is using the Internet and digital technology for. For
example, those in the first and second digital generation were the least
likely to manage their finances online. It could be argued that this aspect
should not come as a surprise as most teenagers don’t really have a great
deal of financial information to manage online. However, this group were
also less likely to use the Internet as a mechanism for engaging in civic
participation, such as voting, campaigns or support groups. This could
perhaps fit into the suggestion that this age group is limited according to
their capacity to empathise as well as the greater sense of apathy, but this
may also just mean this group would rather do things offline in person
rather than using the Internet for such activities. They are, however, more
likely to use the Internet for entertainment purposes, including aspects of
social networking and managing their diaries/calendars, demonstrating an
emphasis on the social functions of the technology – teenagers like to keep
in touch and they like to be entertained by the Internet. In the context of
learning, the younger digital natives widely used the Internet as a
mechanism for fact checking (such as finding definitions for words) as well
as looking for jobs or training. The aspects of social and entertainment use
dropped sharply for those who were neither first- nor second-generation
digital natives; in other applications where money is needed, such as
shopping, financial investment or travel, the first-generation digital natives
were more likely to be engaged in this than the second generation for some
obvious reasons – for example, they have money to spend.
So in contrast to the suggestion by Prensky, it is apparent that generation
alone cannot adequately define someone as being a digital native. In some
respects the findings presented by Helsper and Enyon (2010) do support
some aspects of Prensky’s claim. Younger individuals are more likely to be
immersed in the digital environment and they do have a greater range of
information and communications technology in their households. They are
also more likely to exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy when using
technology and digital media, as well as multitasking more and using the
Internet for fact checking and formal learning activities. The extent to
which such activities represent a shift in the underlying cognitive processes
being conducted between the generations is still a matter of conjecture and
remains an area highlighted for further research. In contrast to Prenksy’s
claim, it is noted that generation alone was not the only significant variable
when exploring activities engaged in on the Internet – aspects of gender,
education, experience and breadth of use also played a significant role in
defining aspects of digital nativeness. Immersion in the digital environment
(the number of activities the individual carries out online) is the most
important variable in predicting the likelihood that the individual belongs to
the classification of ‘digital native’.
Helsper and Eynon concluded their research by demonstrating the issue of
adopting a generational dichotomy when exploring the notion of digital
natives and digital immigrants. They accept that whilst there were some
differences in the way in which each generation used the Internet, there
were also a large number of similarities. Many of the differences were noted
to be due to the level of experience the individual had with digital
technology and the Internet rather than a generation distinction. They also
suggest that Internet use and the associated labels of digital native and
digital immigrant could be more adequately measured on a slide scale or
continuum rather than a simple ‘in-or-out’ dichotomy (see van Dijk, 2005;
Warschauer, 2002 for further detailed dicussion of this). Facer and Furlong
(2001: 467) noted that young people are not a ‘homogenous generation of
digital children’ as Prensky would have us believe. The take-home message
when we are exploring this proposed digital divide is that one doesn’t really
exist, and it is a myth that has been perpetrated by educators, the media and
in some instances researchers who have failed to explore the empirical basis
behind such claims. Yes, young people do use the Internet more, but this
does not mean this has resulted in a significant change in their capacity to
process information, either in terms of breadth or speed. This similarly does
not mean there is an immeasurable gulf between people of different ages
when it comes to the use of digital technology; to use the vernacular
presented by Prensky, it would appear that many in the older generation can
still be fluent in the language of cyberspace, more so based on their level of
experience rather than their age.
Adolescence and the Nature of Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a concept taken from neuropsychology that suggests both
the brain and the nervous system in humans is in a constant state of flux.
The reason for this is so that it can accept new information, perhaps in the
form of a key skill or piece of factual information. This process then creates
an underlying structural change in the brain, as it is seen as being directly
linked to stimulation from the immediate environment (Trojan and Pokorný,
1999). Neuroplasticity also affords individuals the capacity to recover from
impairments in cognitive function due to brain damage or age-related
decline. In such instances there is evidence to suggest that the lost or
impaired elements are subsumed by other regions of the brain or recovered
via training (Rabipour and Raz, 2012). One of the key theoretical
possibilities often posed in research exploring the digital migrant debate is
the potential for an environment rich with digital technology to begin to
influence structural changes within the brain (e.g. Carr, 2010; Small and
Vorgan, 2008). On the surface this whole argument would appear to have
some good support from research, and would appear to be a rational
approach to two key concerns. Choudhury and McKinney (2013) noted
these as being associated with the rise of abnormal social behaviour evident
in the current adolescent population as well as the growing rise in potential
addiction to digital media and digital technology. However, to counter this
claim, Choudhury and McKinney (2013) noted that in terms of empirical
evidence to support the link between the use and potential abuse of digital
technology and changes in the adolescent brain, very little actually exists.
Crucially, much of the research that focuses on the impact digital
technology is having upon the changing nature of developing brains is
flawed in one key respect. All too often, research is conducted that explores
behavioural aspects of elements such as multitasking during a period of
development (see Choudhury and McKinney, 2013, for a more detailed
discussion of this issue). The evidence from such studies is then used to
argue that the use of such technology, alongside the neuroplasticity of the
brain, is having a residual impact on cognition in the developing population.
However, researchers often fail to recognise or discuss the notion that
development itself can give rise to a variety of structural changes that could
in turn provide an additional confounding variable to such data. For
example, Choudhury and McKinney (2013) noted research which further
suggested that the period of adolescence could be viewed in terms of a
period of both risk and vulnerability. Research has proposed that this period
is one of risk for the development of a variety of mental illnesses and
problematic behaviours (Dahl, 2011; Op de Macks et al., 2016). Dahl
(2011) noted that during the period of adolescence there are very large
changes in areas of the prefrontal cortex, an area noted for being
responsible for decision-making and planning. There is also a potential
development lag between those elements of the ‘control’ cognition and
those that are seen as being more ‘emotive’ elements. Burnett et al. (2011)
referred to a network of brain regions that relate directly to aspects of social
cognition, a term that included processes such as face processing and the
capacity to empathise with others. This area, termed the ‘social brain’
(Burnett et al., 2011: 1654), is proposed to undergo a critical period of
development during adolescence as demonstrated in magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) studies that have compared both adult and adolescent
populations. On the ‘control’ side Ernst and Fudge (2009) noted that
adolescence is a period of developmental transition that is, as Dahl (2011)
noted, a time in which individuals increase their level of risky behaviours.
The underlying reason for such a rise is directly associated with the ongoing
changes in the neural circuitry of the brain, hence demonstrating the
important influence of neuroplasticity.
So there is all this upheaval going on in the adolescent brain, and then we
add in a group of researchers who are attempting to try to identify how
digital technology is affecting cognitive processes. The key issue should be
apparent: during a period of developmental turmoil, a period in which
teenagers are going out, experimenting with a variety of ‘risky behaviours’
(we won’t dwell on this ‒ I am not your parents so I am not going to do the
disapproving look!) and having some issues with restricting our impulses to
act, researchers are proposing to be able to pick out which of these
cognitive capacities can be attributed directly to being engaged in digital
technology. As you can see, this is a theoretical and methodological
nightmare, and something that isn’t easily resolved via one or two small-
scale behavioural studies that are conducted during this developmental
period. The idea that the teenage brain is still undergoing a period of change
and therefore is highly susceptible to new stimuli is used by two sides of the
digital technology argument. On one side it is good, as it provides a new
mechanism to engage the younger generation in aspects of teaching and
learning and could be used to change the structure of the brain via repetitive
training. On the other side, subjecting the brain to higher levels of
stimulation from digital technology has negative connotations, leading to
changes in brain development that mean that teenagers are turning into an
army of digital zombies. Whilst the use of neuroplasticity as a basis for
exploring strands of this debate would appear to be fairly logical, the actual
empirical basis upon which this argument is based is weak (Choudhury and
McKinney, 2013). Using the notion of neuroplasticity as a pervasive
mechanism for explaining underlying changes in cognition would appear to
be one possible route, but at the present time much more research is needed.
Prensky’s Reprise: Digital Wisdom
It became apparent that, for most researchers, the notion of a digital divide
conceptualised in terms of generations wasn’t actually practical. As we
have seen above, there are a variety of issues with making a number of key
assumptions in terms of the cognitive skills attached to an entire population.
Prensky himself finally admitted that the dichotomy of digital natives and
digital immigrants wasn’t perhaps the best way to view the key differences
between those who embrace digital technology and those who do not.
Prensky (2009) noted that these labels, although proving useful for
conceptualising the difference in the uptake of digital technology and the
associated differences in cognitive function aligned with this, offer limited
scope for further exploration and are becoming less relevant. Instead he
presents another concept, the notion of ‘digital wisdom’, which has two key
components attached to it. We can gain digital wisdom by harnessing digital
technology to access cognitive resources beyond our current innate
limitations, but also use the same technology to enhance what we already
have.
At the core of Prensky’s argument is that digital technology presents a
capacity for human cognition to be enhanced via a number of key routes.
This digitally enhanced individual, or as Prensky calls them ‘homo sapiens
digital’, will possess a capacity for ‘wisdom’ that is wider than the view we
currently have. How will this come about? Well, according to Prensky the
digital environment presents us with a variety of new experiences and a
broader range of resources that will enhance what we already know. More
importantly the notion of digital wisdom is a concept that goes beyond (and
negates) the need to have a digital divide based on generations. The level of
digital wisdom the individual has relates directly to the level at which the
individual accepts the process of digital enhancement and the way in which
they use such enhancements to engage in aspects of cognition such as
decision-making or memory.
The state of the art human being, according to Prensky, is currently limited
by the processing capacity of the brain and hence we are at risk of missing
out on a variety of opportunities. For example, Prensky suggests that we are
only able to make decisions based on a small amount of total information
available. We are also fallible in terms of our capacity to remember
information; we aren’t rational and we only experience our world in terms
of our key senses, beyond which we have no additional capacity for
perception. Fundamentally, Prensky states that these issues stem from either
a lack of available data and information or our inability to be able to
conduct more complex analyses on greater amounts of data. The saving
grace for the homo sapiens digital is that the enhancements offered by the
digital environment may overcome some of these limitations.
So how does the digital environment enhance our current capacity to think
and reason beyond what we already currently do? Prensky offers a series of
mechanisms via which digital wisdom can be attained, as follows.
Enhancement through Access to Data
As discussed in Chapter 2, the capacity for the human mind to remember
information is limited, not only based on our ability to recall information
but also in terms of storage. This process protects our brains and cognitive
systems from being overloaded by irrelevant information, but also means
that we might lack the capacity to analyse critical problems effectively as
we don’t have all the relevant information (Prensky, 2009). But according
to Prensky, digital technology presents the solution to this problem with its
capacity to gather, store and analyse vast rafts of data effectively and
efficiently.
Enhancing Our Capacity to Conduct Deeper
Analysis
Prensky (2009) presents the work of Anderson (2008), who has proposed
that there is a new and emerging type of scientific analysis based on the vast
volumes of data that are being collected and stored by search engines such
as Google. In this respect, it would appear that investigators now no longer
have to rely on experientially-driven educated guesses, the generation of
hypotheses and the testing of these hypotheses through experimentation.
This process is now replaced with a capacity for the individual to mine data
for patterns that can in turn reveal the effects researchers are looking for
(Prensky, 2009). As the data represents the sum of current knowledge in a
given area, conclusions can be drawn without the need for further
experimentation. In this regard Prensky suggests that this process actively
reverses the traditionally accepted approach to human‒computer
interaction. Rather than the machine being used for just data collection and
processing of information, it now becomes part of the iterative process in
which it generates factual information and potential relationships. This
means that the human mind no longer has the burden of creating a plethora
of possibilities for which the data could conform; rather the data achieves
this already without directly knowing the actual question set.
Enhancing Our Insight into Others
When we are communicating with people, whether this be online or offline,
we are at a critical disadvantage in as much as we cannot see inside the
mind of that other person. Therefore we are capable of misunderstanding
the intended message or may be at risk of being susceptible to any number
of devious or underhanded strategies (Prensky, 2009). Digital technology
now presents us with an enhanced ability to go beyond what people say and
perhaps explore what people are thinking through the use of computer-
linked functional imaging (Mitchell et al., 2008, as cited in Prensky, 2009).
Enhancing Our Capacity to Engage with
Alternative Perspectives
Prensky (2009) claims that our unenhanced senses as they currently stand
mean that we often miss the finer details in the world around us. This may
be due to such occurrences being infinitely small and outside our field of
vision, or so large that the scope of such an occurrence is incomprehensible.
The realm of possibilities offered by our digital enhancement means that we
could soon be able to explore these multiple perspectives as well as having
the added benefit of being able to pick up on things that would be
traditionally outside of our normal sphere of perception.
Key issues
Prensky’s suggestions are interesting and some of the points legitimately
supported – yes, we have lots of data that are being collected online and
yes, there are new ways in which to explore the functioning of the human
mind. However, much of the information he presents is again conjectural,
and falls foul of the same criticisms levied at the digital native/digital
immigrant conceptualisation. There is limited empirical evidence at present
upon which to base the notion of digital wisdom, and without further work
in the area much of these suggestions are purely conjectural.
Summary
In this chapter we have explored the notion that cyberspace is currently
inhabited by two different generations, determined by their access to and
immersion in digital technology. As we have seen, the concept forwarded
by writers such as Prensky has served to guide a whole plethora of further
ideas related to the enhancing processing power that has been gifted to the
digital natives within cyberspace. Endowed with a capacity to think faster,
multitask at a speed that is outside of the capacity of their distant digital
immigrant relatives, the digital natives present a challenge in terms of how
to best understand the way in which they not only think but also learn.
However, as many commentators and researchers have later noted, this
concept of digital dualism within cyberspace is based on little empirical
evidence. Arguments for augmented cognitive skills based on a developing
neural network that is subjected to digital technology have been negated.
Similarly other research has noted that if such a trend did exist, all those
who are labelled as digital natives should possess a similar level of
technical aptitude and capacity to engage with cyberspace. Just a sweeping
generalisation has also been shown not to be evident, with many of those
inhabiting the digital native population still not having access to the
relevant skills enabling them to get online.

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4 Attracting Attention in the Digital
Environment
Learning Aims and Objectives
To introduce and define exogenous and endogenous drivers in
attention and contextualise these for the online digital
environment;
to critically explore mechanisms that are used online with the
aim of attracting end-user attention;
to explore research that highlights we may not be seeing
everything in the online digital environment.
Overview
[A] civilization advances by extending the number of operations we
can perform without thinking about them. (Whitehead, 1911)
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to
allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of
information sources that might consume it. (Simon, 1971: 40–41)
In this chapter I want to introduce some key mechanisms that influence the
way in which we pay attention in the online environment. In order to
attempt to put some type of parameters on the information in the chapter,
the main focus will be directly on visually presented elements that we
encounter in the context of the Internet. I shall leave aspects of wider digital
technology and their impact on cognition until we explore interruptions in
Chapter 7.
Much of the work on grabbing the attention online has been done,
unsurprisingly, in relation to web-based advertising. To put this into
context, in 2009 Internet advertising generated approximately $22.7 billion
in the United States, increasing to $59.6 billion in 2015
(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2016), so it is a pretty big business. Web-based
adverts tend to employ a variety of mechanisms that are aimed at grabbing
our attention and generating further revenue. However, there has to be a
balance, as some of the cunning tricks and techniques that are employed by
online advertisers can backfire, and end users often report being annoyed by
intrusive adverts or giving negative feedback to websites that employ such
techniques (Goldstein et al., 2013)
The task of grabbing an individual’s attention in the online environment
presents a series of challenges for web designers and advertisers alike,
particularly when we explore such a task in the context of human cognition.
As we have already explored in Chapter 2, humans have limited resources
when it comes to attention, so their capacity to explore additional
information is restricted by such limitations. Second, the Internet contains a
vast amount of information, with conservative estimates suggesting that if
you tried to print the entire Internet (including the Dark Web) it would
equate to 305.5 billion pages (imagine that printing bill!; see
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/05/18/if-you-could-
print-out-the-whole-internet-how-many-pages-would-it-be/). As you can
see, it isn’t an easy task to grab our attention to things on the Internet,
particularly when we might be developing strategies based on experience to
actively avoid such mechanisms (Bruner and Kumar, 2000).
What Processes Underlie the Tools Used to Grab
Our Attention Online?
Research into human attention has highlighted the importance of two key
processes when we are looking at how we direct our attention. Both of these
processes have a clear contextual importance for our discussions here in
relation to digital technology. These two processes are endogenous and
exogenous.
Endogenous (Internally)-Driven Attentional
Processes
These are the processes that are being driven by personal preferences, goals,
objectives or expectations (Rensink, 2008). For example if you are in a
shop looking for a particular colour of clothing, then endogenous
processing will direct you towards clothing of that colour, rather than you
being drawn to a specific colour. This aspect of the selective attention is
consciously driven by the individual and reflects the need to fulfil our
current needs or wants. An important aspect associated with endogenously-
driven attention is that it relies upon an intricate knowledge of objects or
scenes. This capability is critical in the context of selective attention as we
need to have a mechanism that allows us to decide what we need to attend
to and what can be ignored as being irrelevant to our current task objectives
(Rensink, 2008). For our current discussion, having an understanding of
these aspects of attention has clear implications for the development of
information processing in cyberspace. Individual differences in current
processing objectives means that the same information presented to two
different people could illicit two very different focuses of attention. In this
regard the presentation and interpretation of information in the online
digital domain might not seem as straightforward as the ‘one-size-fits-all’
approach that is often assumed. Differences in attentional deployment can
be directly associated with the individuals’ own predispositions as well as
their level of knowledge or expertise in a particular domain (Rensink,
2008). This could be as simple as the distinction between those who engage
in frequent Internet use and those who are infrequent users, with
endogenous drivers meaning that these two groups may have a differential
level of attentional deployment.
Exogenous (Externally)-Driven Attentional
Processes
These are driven directly by the perceptual content of stimuli and over
which the individual will have very little control. This attentional process is
typically a rapid and involuntary response that serves to automatically focus
mental resources towards the location of the stimuli (Navalpakkam and Itti,
2005; Rensink, 2008). Often such a process can override current task focus,
usually reflective of an abrupt or novel event. An example of this could
include attention being ‘captured’ by a brightly coloured image or a sudden
pop-up advert whilst someone is browsing a webpage. This could also be an
email notification or a text message alert from a smartphone (Kushlev et al.,
2016). Researchers have also suggested that exogenous shifts of attention
remain outside our conscious control of the individual, linked to an
evolutionary response to a perceived threat (Roda, 2011).
How Do These Processes Fit into Our Digital
World?
To put these processes into a more direct context aligned with our current
focus, both have relevance to our interactions with cyberspace. If you think
about it, both processes react in very different ways when faced with stimuli
not only within the digital environment but also more widely in our every
use of digital technology. An exogenous process means that we would be
driven to pay attention to material based directly on their capacity to grab
attention away from the current focus of attention. In contrast, endogenous
processes are predispositions that the individual will already hold and that
motivate and guide interactions with material online. Such processes exist
prior to any move towards engaging with a particular website or choosing a
particular function. As such, they provide the individual with a more
directed approach to online activities and help prevent the end user from
being distracted by other task-irrelevant information.
There have been some attempts to separate the influence of these two
processes on attention but such attempts have met with a degree of
difficulty, even in the context of highly controlled experimental studies
(Bacon and Egeth, 1994; Burke et al., 2005; Folk and Remington, 1998). If
we extrapolate these attentional processes onto web-based behaviour where
the goals of the user can be even less well defined, further challenges are
presented. For example, things that have a direct and relevant meaning to us
drive us endogenously to pay attention. This aspect of semantic salience
could be presented in an advert, attracting attention as it has a particular
link or relevance to us based on our needs or individuals’ own
predispositions. An example of such a process was presented by Burke et
al. (2005) who suggested that the inclusion of the word ‘FREE’ in the
content of a banner advert could attract attention that advert if the
individual was trying to save money. It will come as no surprise that a lot of
work has focused on how the end user pays attention to online adverts,
something that we will be exploring in more detail later on in this chapter.
So let’s try to bring these processes back into the context of the focus for
this book and explore how they could be experienced by individual users
within cyberspace. Exogenous system messages such as email, message
alerts and web-based information can all vary our current focus of attention,
and will obviously also impact on how we engage with the current task (see
Chapter 7 for a discussion of interruptions). System messages or program
alerts serve to highlight task-relevant information and important control
features through the exogenous orientation of attention.
In some situations exogenous stimuli can re-direct attention even if the
signal itself is completely irrelevant to the current task. This movement of
attention outside of the conscious control of the perceiver has been termed
attentional capture (Roda, 2011; Yantis, 2000; Yantis and Jonides, 1984).
Franconeri and Simons (2003) suggested that new objects, objects that
move suddenly or approaching objects represent clear significance in terms
of possible threats. These therefore attract the observer’s attention away
from the primary task. In contrast to this, any visual objects that are moving
away from the observer or objects sharing a similar colour have less of a
behavioural significance, and are therefore failing to draw significant levels
of attention away from the primary task. Notionally certain facets of
visually presented information, whether this be online or offline, can draw
attention away from the primary task. There is a clear suggestion that
certain aspects of stimulus saliency are more capable of drawing attention
away from the primary task. In instances where the task is of critical
importance any further knowledge that can help to identify factors that
prevent the end-user from being able to perform such is of clear importance
for further investigation.
The Impact of Perceptual Saliency
As previously mentioned, the relevance of something within our field of
view can impact on our likelihood to attend to that thing, particularly when
it has semantic relevance. Exogenous processes, for the most part, place the
emphasis on the end user selecting to attend based directly upon the notion
of its perceptual saliency (Roda, 2011). The notion of perceptual saliency
has been conceptualised in a variety of ways, but for the present discussion
it is best seen as how much a ‘thing’ serves to stand out from the
background in which it is being presented. The notion of saliency for any
type of stimulus can be determined via a variety of basic aspects including
colour, size, shape and motion amongst just a few (Rensink, 2011; Roda,
2012). Importantly, attention to salient stimuli is something that can be
learned, therefore lowering the threshold for which certain aspects of the
environment can capture attention. An example presented by Roda (2011)
suggested that an individual hearing their own name in a conversation could
act as a salient stimulus, causing attention to be directed towards that
particular point in space. Lavie and colleagues (2003) noted that the
appearance of a famous face caused more significant levels of disruption in
a concurrent task compared to a face that was unknown. Importantly for our
present exploration, we want to see whether users can be distracted from
their current task objectives if perceptually salient stimuli are presented.
The Impact of Motion and Animation on
Attention
Early work exploring the impact of animation and motion on attention in
computer-based information systems highlighted its usefulness in attracting
users to specific areas of the screen (Cropper and Evans, 1968; Smith and
Goodwin, 1971). Much of this work focused on the use of simple ‘blink’
animation on elements in the visual display in order to attract the attention
of the end user towards important elements of the screen. However, these
early studies showed that many individuals found the presence of moving or
animated visual elements distracting, obtrusive, disruptive, and perceived
levels of increased fatigue (Hong et al., 2004; McCormick, 1970; Stewart,
1976). Similarly, as Hong et al. (2004) rightly point out, much of these
earlier results were heavily based on technology that is a far cry from the
current digital technology we have today, hence presenting outdated
findings.
For the most part the exploration of animation and its ability to attract
attention has presented two clear perspectives. On the one hand, there is the
primary suggestion that animation and motion, when used correctly, can
attract attention exogenously towards a target object (Zhang, 2000).
However, in contrast further research has noted that endogenous processes,
such as goal-directedness, can counteract the presence of such stimuli
(Tuten et al., 2000). Individuals could also intentionally create a series of
task completion strategies that remain fluid. This is endogenously driven in
the first instance, but allows the end user to make irrelevant but salient
aspects of the display relevant to the task, hence increasing the distraction
from such features (Burke et al., 2005).
Animation and motion are common components used in a variety of
contexts on the Internet. The use of these mechanisms can alert the user to
task-relevant information or be presented as a distraction from current task
objectives in the form of online advertising. Little information on the effect
this aspect of interaction with websites has upon information-processing
activities existed prior to work conducted by Zhang (2000). Zhang (2000)
suggested that there were a variety of limitations in understanding of
perceptual and cognitive processes in the online environment. In order to
overcome this, it was proposed that existing theories on visual attention
could be used to explore the disruptive effects of animation on information
processing. The basic premise for these theories relate again to the notion of
a set of limited resources for completing any task. Perceptually salient
stimuli that are not task relevant will theoretically reduce the amount of
resources devoted to the current task. The net result is reduced processing
efficiency and an increase in the length of time it takes to complete the task
in hand (Allport, 1989; Duncan, 1984; Treisman, 1991).
There are some problems with making the assumption that previous
theories used to explain offline processes will also be effective in
explaining experiences in the digital environment. In traditional visual
perception experiments, participants are usually exposed to test stimuli for
periods in the order of milliseconds. In contrast, the experience of being
exposed to material in the online domain can last for a few seconds or
extend into minutes at any one time. Zhang (2000) suggested that this
difference in the amount of time subjected to particular stimuli could be
responsible for a shift in the perceptual and attentional mechanisms
governing their processing. A second point highlighted by Zhang (2000) is
that there is a key difference in the environments under exploration. Those
used in traditional visual perception studies are limited to the parameters
under the control of the researcher, and lack the ecological validity of the
web-based environment. Web-based environments, in contrast, contain a
rich variety of information, much of which is seen as superfluous to the task
in hand. Additionally, the interactions we have with it are constantly
evolving based on the current objectives or goals.
In order to fill this perceived gap in our empirical understanding, Zhang
presented experimental work that focused on animation that provided no
further information to the user. Therefore it was seen as being ‘non-
primary’ inasmuch as it did not add anything to aid the completion of the
primary task. The findings from Zhang’s (2000) study demonstrated that
animation had a clear detrimental impact on the information-seeking
capability of the participants. This effect was found irrespective of the
perceived difficulty of the task. A second finding, and one that has been
consistently demonstrated in later research in this area, is that there is a
direct link between task complexity and the effect of animation on
performance. Zhang (2000) also found that as the task complexity
increased, the disruptive effect of animation on performance decreased.
This is a pattern that has been noted in further research, and is hypothesised
to be related to the limited attentional resources individuals possess.
Attentional resources are diverted away from the primary task so that the
end user can interact with extraneous aspects of the web-based
environment. The overall result is less attention being paid to the current
focus of web-searching behaviour, which ultimately results in longer search
times (Zhang, 2000).
A study conducted by Burke et al. (2005) explored the effect of animation
on both attention and memory. The underlying notion in this context is that
more cognitive resources are deployed in the processing of attention-
grabbing material, hence they become more memorable at a later time.
Bayles (2002) explored this by using two types of banner advert (those
placed at the top edge of the webpage); one was animated, the other
remained static. Participants were asked to complete a variety of tasks
requiring them to use key features of the websites, after which they were
asked to complete a surprise recall task. In this they were asked to re-create
the layout and contents of the previously viewed webpages from memory.
The findings from this research demonstrated no clear link between the type
of banner advert used (animated vs. static) and the memorability of the
information presented. It was also noted that a vast majority of participants
failed to notice the presence of the banner adverts at all.
The Impact of Motion
Bartram et al. (2003) explored the role of motion in the attraction or
distraction of attention of the end user. In the hectic environments of our
desktop computers, our attention is often distributed across a variety of
different windows, websites or indeed applications. Some information
might be relevant to what we are doing, and other information may be
completely irrelevant (you don’t really need to know that your friend is
eating asparagus when you are trying to analyse data, or do you?).
According to Bartram et al. (2003) we need something that can help us keep
up to date with changes in information that lie outside our current focus but
that may have direct relevance to the task in hand (e.g. virus update
information, latest news information). Examples of this type of information
include reminder boxes, stock-ticker-type scrolling message feeds or system
alert boxes (2003). According to the design of these system feeds,
particularly in terms of website design, such information is usually located
around the edges of the screen (Bartram et al., 2003; Czerwinski and
Larson, 2002; Maglio and Campbell, 2000). In other instances the updated
information may be located elsewhere in the visual display, and in the
instances of things like email message alerts are often directly attached to
objects in the display (Bartram et al., 2003; Mitchell et al., 1997; Sarter and
Woods, 1995). The important aspect of this form of display is that it is
effortful in nature, and requires a high level of cognitive processing for the
user to be able to compare the currently displayed information to previous
material and make an assessment according to whether there has been any
change. According to Bartram et al. (2003), only a very small amount of
information can be included in each visual domain, with most visual
information relying heavily on aspects such as shape, colour, size and
texture (Bartram et al., 2003; Ware, 2000). The authors point to the
importance of motion in attracting observers to salient aspects of the web
environment, highlighting key aspects of the system of critical importance
without distracting valuable cognitive resources away from the task in hand.
Bartram et al. (2003) noted that when motion as a notification mechanism is
used it is much better than more traditional static codes such as colour or
shape when attracting the attention of users. This is more apparent when the
notification location is presented at the edges of the screen. In their research
they noted that the percentage of undetected targets went from 2 per cent to
25 per cent where the peripheral visual targets were manipulated on colour
alone. In comparison, the failure to detect a target that was altered in terms
of motion was less than 2 per cent, even when the target appeared at the
very edges of the screen display. Bartram et al. (2003) noted that motion as
a mechanism for perceptual saliency appears to be better remembered in
contrast to colour and shape. This has the added benefit of allowing the user
to accurately identify where and what has changed in the context of the
current visual display. There are differences according to the type of
animation and its capability to distract the user from their primary task, with
travelling motions (those moving from one point to another across the
screen) requiring more tracking and detection. Such motions are shown to
be more distracting in comparison with those that are static in nature or
anchored to one particular part of the screen (2003). Zooming motions
(where the icon increases in size and then returns back to its original size
after a short period of time) are also seen as distracting, but less so than the
previous two forms already mentioned. This aspect of distraction by motion
via attentional capture could be linked back to the work of Franconeri and
Simons (2003; Franconeri et al., 2005), as this movement would have
significant behavioural significance for users.
The Impact of Pop-Up Ads
Additional work by Diao and Sundar (2004) further explored the effects of
pop-up advertisements on attention and memory. The authors make
reference to the concept of the ‘orienting reflex’ (OR; see Sokolov, 1963) to
provide a basic framework from which to explore the impact of these
adverts on attention and information processing. The OR in its simplest
form states that attention will be drawn (exogenously) to new stimuli that
do not currently match an existing template in memory. The work by Diao
and Sundar (2004) highlighted that the appearance of pop-up
advertisements on webpages should elicit an OR. As they usually appear
after the main webpage has loaded, the sudden change in the visual field
from an unexpected event should lead to an exogenous shift in attention
(Diao and Sundar, 2004; Jonides and Yantis, 1988; Yantis and Jonides,
1984, 1990).
The OR is an automatic process that has been highlighted as being
responsible for the allocation of resources to each of these different sub-
processes (Diao and Sundar, 2004). More specifically the OR will
automatically shift attention towards a stimulus to encode that information,
resulting in reduced resources being available for the two other stages. Diao
and Sundar (2004) suggest that any message containing an OR should
therefore lead to a reduction in key differences in the way that message is
encoded in memory. In their research Diao and Sundar (2004) supported
some aspects of this proposal, with pop-up ads eliciting an OR resulting in
increased ad recall. There was no residual effect of animation in terms of
eliciting an OR, highlighting that this mechanism is not always sufficient or
necessary to attract the attention of end users. The authors also found that a
static banner advert was recognised more often in contrast to the rare and
abrupt appearance of the pop-up advert. They mediate this result by
suggesting that this was due to the increased presence of the banner advert
for lengthy periods of time, therefore receiving more attention over time.
McCoy et al. (2004) also explored the retention of information from
websites and the amount of advertisements the website contained. They
found that the material from the website was better retained when pop-up
adverts were not used. They also found that pop-up adverts reduced the
retention of both site and advertisement content more than standard online
adverts, such as banner ads. However Cochrane (2006) demonstrated no
significant difference between experienced and inexperienced users in the
recall of pop-up adverts as indicated through low memory recall. Both
groups were shown to have seen the pop-up adverts, but failed to retain
much information contained within them. Participants were able to provide
a partial report of the information contained within the pop-up adverts
themselves, such as the price of the product, but were unable to provide a
clear description of the product itself. It was also noted that participants
picked out salient words such as ‘diet’, which fits into aspects of
endogenous shifting based on individual predispositions. The finding that
habitual users of the Internet have acquired no special skills in terms of
their ability to ‘block out’ such adverts, is an interesting one and suggests
that the power of the pop-up advert is more pervasive that we assume.
The Impact of Task Type on Exogenous Shifts in
Attention
The notion that there are distinct differences in processes governing goal-
driven and free-browsing activities has also been indicated in the context of
this research (Burke et al., 2005; Tuten et al., 2000; Yesilada et al., 2008).
Results from Burke et al. (2005) supported a number of findings from
previous research. The authors demonstrated that the nature of the task
directly influenced the level of distraction from banner adverts. Here again
the pattern showed that the higher the level of perceived cognitive load for
the task in hand, the lower the susceptibility to distraction from task-
irrelevant animated adverts. Furthermore, the results showed that there was
no significant difference between the static and animated banner adverts in
terms of their disruptive effect on performance. In later research Pagendarm
and Schaumberg (2006) highlighted a clear difference in the memorability
of banner adverts according to the processing objectives of the individual
users. Participants given clear tasks to complete whilst using the websites
retained less information compared with those individuals who explored the
website without clear aims. It would again appear that individuals who have
no direct goal have the attentional resources spare to pursue extraneous
material via exogenous processing. On the other hand, those who are goal
directed activate a cognitive mechanism that suppresses the processing of
web-based banner advertisements further (Pagendarm and Schaumberg,
2006).
In more recent research Simola et al. (2011) present an updated picture of
advertising saliency on attention and task performance. They suggest that
the previous research in the area suggests that web users are relying heavily
on endogenously-based strategies to help them ignoring adverts in visual
field (e.g. Dreze and Hussherr, 2003; Stenfors et al., 2003). The suggestion
is that such strategies are capable of overriding the exogenous attentional
processes from low-level salient stimuli. However, Simola et al. (2011)
noted that the effects of animation on attention and performance are not so
clear-cut. In some studies there is little or no impact of such stimuli on
performance, indicating that individuals are able to deploy these
exogenous-blocking strategies driven by top-down processes. However, in
other research there are subjective reports stating that participants find such
adverts distracting and are aware of them, but in fact rarely look at them or
indeed remember them (Simola et al., 2011).
The research conducted by Simola et al. (2011) presents a variety of
findings that suggest that the view of animation and online advertising
linked into performance is not as straightforward as initially thought. In
contrast to previous findings from studies of a similar nature, the
researchers found that online adverts were not ignored as much as initially
proposed during an online reading task. This was demonstrated irrespective
of task type (either goal-directed or free-browsing), suggesting that adverts
were being overtly attended to through endogenous processes rather than
covertly through subconscious automatic processing. Interestingly the
effects of animation on reading performance for web-based text showed that
attentional capture was greatest when one advert towards the right of the
text was animated and a banner advert above remained static. This
condition elicited the greatest level of disruption in performance, even when
compared with the condition where both adverts were animated. The
suggestion made by the authors to explain this finding was that two adverts
animated simultaneously share salience, essentially cancelling out the
disruptive effect. Where one advert is animated, this becomes a unique
event in a static display, hence attracting attention via exogenous processes.
In relation to advertisements with abrupt onsets (e.g. those that suddenly
appear and then disappear), the findings from Simola et al.’s (2011)
research showed that these too can attract attention exogenously but the
effect is mediated by task type and advert location. It was shown that when
users were engaged in a reading task they were able to ignore the sudden
onset of adverts if they occurred in the periphery of the visual display and
outside of the designated task area. However, if the sudden onset adverts
were presented within the task area, they were less well ignored and
affected text-reading performance. Simola et al. (2011) suggested
individuals were actively engaging avoidance mechanisms when abrupt
onset adverts always occurred in the same location. As the adverts were
always presented in the same place, this pattern of appearance became
highly predictable, thus allowing users to be pre-cued to their presence.
Interestingly, the research conducted by Simola et al. (2011) demonstrated
that advertisements (web-based text) placed to the right of task-relevant
material were more likely to be attended to and cause a reduction in reading
performance. This pattern of results was linked to the processes of reading
web-based text, with individuals reading from left to right. The individual’s
gaze has a tendency to immediately overlap towards the area to the right of
the text, hence individuals are more likely to attend to material in this area
of the screen. Adverts based above task-relevant information are less likely
to be included in reading-contingent movement, and as the individual gets
further down the body of text they are even less likely to pay attention to
material in this area. However, earlier research presented by Cooke et al.
(2008) noted that participants usually ignored information presented on the
right-hand side of the screen as they expected it to contain task-irrelevant
information such as adverts.
A final finding from Simola et al.’s (2011) research that supports a notion
discussed throughout this section is that more attention is being allocated to
extraneous material (such as adverts) when the task constraints are less
stringent. In the instance of free-browsing, the capacity for attentional
capture by abrupt onset adverts is greater than in goal-directed
comprehension tasks. Here it is assumed that the current goal is exerting a
greater top-down influence on the allocation of attention, allowing
individuals to override the exogenous influence of them. In free-browsing
no such overriding influence from endogenous processes exists, thus
freeing up attentional resources to process irrelevant material such as web
adverts. Simola et al. (2011) conclude by stating that the findings from their
research support previous theoretical discussions from research into visual
attention, indicating that some aspects of online behaviours can be mapped
onto existing models.
In the context of online cognitive processes, the visual saliency of motion or
animation appears to be good at attracting attention exogenously. For the
web user the use of motion in order to gain attention or focus the individual
towards key aspects of the visual display is an important metric in gauging
how end users are deploying attention in complex visual environments such
as the Internet. Clearly, given the evidence thus far, it appears that motion
has the capability to interfere with concurrent tasks, even when they are
deemed fairly simple in nature (Bartram et al., 2003). However, as the task
complexity increases (e.g. browsing and reading online text) there is a
reciprocal decrease in the amount of distraction and irritation elicited by
motion. This could be directly linked to the limited resources individuals
have at their disposal when conducting these complex tasks, with little or no
spare capacity to deal with extraneous input that is not relevant to the task
in hand.
Failures in Information Processing
As we can see from the research that has been conducted into web-based
advertising, both position and perceptual saliency can have a dramatic
impact on the attention we pay to them. It is interesting that we often make
the assumption that the individual is capable of attending to most aspects of
the visual environment, and that they actively block out information that is
not relevant to them. We would also assume that anything that is novel or
distinctive in the web-based environment should influence saliency of that
stimulus and cause attention to be directed to it. There is, however, a body
of research that suggests that individuals often fail to see something that
appears right in front of their eyes, with such events often being very
obvious to the casual observer (Jensen et al., 2011). Two key phenomena
can be used in order to view certain aspects of interactions with web-based
material, and have some obvious theoretical and practical implications. The
primary phenomenon is that of change blindness, and is defined as the
failure to detect clear and substantial changes in the visual display (Jensen
et al., 2011). The second phenomenon is that of inattentional blindness,
which is characterised as a failure to notice an unexpected but fully visible
item when attention is diverted to another aspect of our visual environment.
As our web-based interactions are spatially limited visual experiences and
are restricted by the confines of the screen, we would assume that we can
see everything contained within it. As researchers such as Varakin et al.
(2004) have suggested, this may be a possible overestimation of breadth,
where we assume that we are capable of taking in all aspects of a visual
display. What could these overestimations mean in the context of the digital
environment?
Varakin et al. (2004) present an early discussion of how these failures in the
attentional system could impact on the use of a variety of human‒computer
interfaces. In the broadest sense, the discussion is directed towards general
interactions with any computer-based interface where users are confronted
by confined displays, with some key aspects having direct relevance to the
present focus of online information processing.
A key example of inattentional blindness in the context of web-based
activity has been discussed briefly in the previous section looking at
animation and attention. In an original study by Benway (1999), research
explored the failure of users to attend to an important aspect of the webpage
containing critical pieces of task-relevant information. Employees were
being encouraged to sign up to a training course via a brightly designed
banner placed at the top of the screen. In follow-up interviews it appeared
that the employees were successfully navigating to the webpage that
contained the banner with the link to the relevant sign-up page for the
training course, but were failing to actually read it. Benway (1999) later
replicated this phenomenon in an empirical study, defining it as banner
blindness. This is operationalised as the inattention to a prominent advert or
banner containing task-relevant information. As discussed previously, such
a trend is not isolated and has been documented by other researchers (Burke
et al., 2005; Gorman et al., 2005; Owens et al., 2011; Simola et al., 2011).
Varakin et al. (2004) further highlight the impact of change blindness in the
design of e-reading-based software. Participants in this study were asked to
trial software that allowed them to browse current news stories, with the
key task being to gather pieces of information located within target articles.
Participants were then asked a series of questions based on the information
they had been presented with, as well as a question related to any
unexpected changes that had occurred during their navigation through the
information. Despite large changes in the visual display only 50 per cent of
participants taking part in the study noticed these changes taking place.
Here is evidence that even in the confined space of simple e-reading
software users can still miss important and distinct changes in the visual
display. As in the case of banner blindness, individuals are missing
perceptually and semantically salient pieces of information, and as such
these are not reaching awareness.
Owens et al. (2011) took this notion of banner blindness one step further,
and rather than looking at animated graphical information they looked at
participants’ capacity to ignore web-based text adverts (see Figure 4.1).
Participants were asked to find task-relevant information located on screen
that could be placed in the main body of the text, at the top of the page or
located in a side panel. Participants were then rated in terms of their success
at finding the relevant information; 83 per cent found it when it was
contained within the main body of the text, 52 per cent when it was located
at the top of the page and 36.8 per cent when it was located in the side
panel. The findings would seem to suggest that individuals adopt strategies
to actively ignore text-based advertising, which is something that has been
noted with other types of advertising information. This could perhaps be a
moot point as many advertising companies have diverted their attention
from text-based advertising to more laborious mechanisms for capturing
attention online.
Figure 4.1 Examples of banner adverts (A) and text-based ads (B)

Source: Owens et al. (2011)

Similar findings have also been found for change blindness in a military
context, which does have some relevance to our current discussion. Durlach
(2004) explored the susceptibility of individuals whilst using a military-
based command and control system. The system provided a series of real-
time updates related to current mission objects, details of enemy location
and that of friendly forces. Results demonstrated support for earlier research
conducted by Durlach and Chen (2003) showing that participants were less
likely to notice a change in a series of task-critical icons presented on
screen whilst another task window was closed and opened. Participants
were 50 per cent less likely to notice the change in the position of an on-
screen icon when this occurred at the same time as a concurrent task
window closing and reopening. Such findings have also been found by
DiVita et al. (2004). If we think about how most people use the Internet, it
is pretty clear that very few people use web-browsing windows in isolation,
and often move between any number of concurrent screens (Ophir et al.,
2009). It could be very easy to miss significant changes in any of these
windows during the process of minimising and maximising them, and is
something that has received little or no empirical research focus.
Steffner and Schenkman (2012) did present an exploration of change
blindness in the context of viewing webpage information, one of the very
few of its type. In this study the researchers explored the impact individual
aspects of the change and the complexity of the task environment had on
the detection of change. The study included four distinct kinds of
manipulation according to the size of the change, the complexity and
location of the change, and whether the change occurred to a person or an
inanimate object or aspect of the webpage. The researchers highlighted a
series of hypotheses based on previous research in the change blindness
literature, indicating that larger changes, changes in simple objects, changes
on the left of the screen and changes made directly to a person would all be
easier to detect in the context of viewing a webpage.
The results from the research by Steffner and Schenkman (2012) presented
some interesting findings. In contrast to what had been previously assumed,
changes occurring to a person on a webpage were less easily noticed than
those made to a non-person. The research also failed to highlight any
significant difference in participants’ abilities to detect change according to
the manipulation of complexity. It was noted that one of the limitations to
the presented study was perhaps the distinction of complexity, and that
aspects of the visual environment contributing to the notion of perceptual
‘clutter’ may have had a limited impact on the detection of change.
Participants also found objects located on the left-hand side of the screen
more difficult to detect as opposed to those located on the right. This could
be related to work discussed elsewhere in this chapter by Simola et al.
(2011), who found that material placed on the right-hand side of a webpage
was more likely to interfere with text comprehension. This was seen as
being indicative of this area benefiting from a more direct focus of attention
than that of the left.
This research presents the first real empirical evidence that aspects of
change blindness can and do have an impact on individual information
processing for online content, but is obviously limited to one basic study.
There is also no further discussion of the impact visual complexity has upon
the process of change blindness, and how far visual clutter must go in order
to induce such an effect. There is also a respective dearth of any such
empirical basis for research exploring such effects for inattentional
blindness, which should also be of importance.
Summary
In this chapter we have explored the capacity for our attention to be
captured and directed elsewhere in the visual display. It would appear that,
based on the evidence, some mechanisms can be used to attract our
attention but there are a few key conditions that meter their performance.
For instance, it appears that task type matters – when we have specific goals
to fulfil whilst surfing the Internet, such as trying to find some information,
we are less likely to fall foul of distracting animations. In contrast, when we
are browsing for fun, the lure of the animated ad appears to be not so easily
resisted. Similarly, it would appear that individuals surfing the web have
adopted strategies that actively block attention to specific areas of a
webpage that hold irrelevant information, or which usually present advert-
based information. This is even more pertinent when we look at aspects
such as ‘banner blindness’, which demonstrate that even though the
information could have particular salience for the end user, we actively
ignore information located at the top of the webpage. This occurs even
when the information is animated, showing the resilience of the attention
system to such presentation methods.

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5 Digital Gaming, Brain Training and
Cognition
Learning Aims and Objectives
To introduce the idea that human cognition can be improved or
enhanced through the use of digital video games;
to define the key terms and concepts;
to explore the evidence for and against the claims associated
with cognitive improvements;
to introduce the concept of brain training or ‘cognitive training’;
to explore the evidence presented both for and against the
benefits of such programs.
Overview
One element of the digital environment that has garnered a great deal of
attention over recent decades is the impact of video gaming on a variety of
cognitive and social skills. The much-maligned debate about the impact of
violent video games is not one that will be the focus of discussion here, and
there are plenty of other reviews that would do a far better job of this than I
can (e.g. Griffiths, 1999). The accumulated research that focuses on the
impact for cognitive skills is very broad in its scope, and the results are far
from clear cut. Nonetheless many researchers have presented evidence that
supports the notion that key cognitive skills can be enhanced when
engaging in video game play.
To place this into context, a survey questioning 1102 individuals aged
between 12 and 17 found that at least 97 per cent play some form of digital
video game (Lenhart et al., 2008). Other researchers have noted that at least
60 per cent of individuals aged between 8 and 18 played video games on at
least a daily basis (Rideout et al., 2010). There have been a variety of
attempts to explore how digital gaming can enhance certain skills, with
research suggesting the development of problem-solving skills (Adachi and
Willoughby, 2013; Prensky, 2012), spatial skills (Dorval and Pépin, 1986;
Feng et al., 2007; Green and Bavelier, 2003) and persistence (Shute et al.,
2015; Ventura et al., 2013). However, these findings aren’t so clear cut, and
some researchers have noted that there are a variety of methodological
issues associated with some of these findings (Boot et al., 2008) as well as a
lack of detailed empirical support (Shute et al., 2015).
Serious Games: These Are Not Video Games!
You might come across some reference to ‘serious gaming’ when exploring
the impact of gaming on improvements in performance and skill. For the
most part these aspects will fall out of the scope of the current discussion,
but do warrant some consideration, as there is a cross-over here with our
present exploration.
Serious gaming is a more recent development in the context of training and
builds upon the use of computer-based training applications. In traditional
training applications there is a recognised system of knowledge delivery (on
the behalf of the instructor) followed by learning and testing of retention
(on the behalf of the trainee). As noted by Greitzer et al. (2007), such a
system presents no real opportunity for the trainee to actually engage and
utilise the material that is being presented to them. These traditional
training systems usually allow the trainee the capacity to access knowledge-
testing phases such as quizzes or multiple-choice questions for numerous
attempts. Similarly the materials on which such test questions have been
based are freely available for the trainees to review over and over again.
Therefore such mechanisms fail to fully engage the individual in a state of
active learning, which in turn aims to ensure that learners are exploring the
functional elements of the material as opposed to a simple knowledge
acquisition process.
Serious gaming has been championed as a mechanism to overcome this
shortfall in traditional forms of training (Greitzer et al., 2007). Zyda (2005:
26) goes on to define the notion of serious games by linking it directly to
the key application areas for such systems: ‘Serious game: a mental contest,
played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses
entertainment to further government or corporate training, education,
health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.’
Serious games have also been used in the context of both investigation and
advertisement (Breuer and Bente, 2010; Muntean, 2011; Susi et al., 2007).
Serious games have a goal of adapting elements of gaming to engage the
individual beyond the basic aspect of ‘playfulness’. However, serious
games are designed with a specific task or purpose in mind and therefore
have little direct application outside of that given environment.
Although serious games can be used to advance aspects of behavioural
change, there are some specific disadvantages to such an approach.
Primarily the cost of designing, piloting and implementing such systems
can be a block to their implementation, especially when the potential user
base is small and specialised. Second, as they are usually designed with a
specific purpose in mind, the cross-applicability to other areas is limited,
making them even less cost effective if further exploitation is a goal. In
terms of engagement, serious gaming usually employs game-related
dynamics and game environments that could potentially deter those
individuals who have no interest in video gaming. There is also some
discussion of how effective serious games are in terms of their intended
aims and goals, with some indicating that an objective examination of their
effectiveness is immensely problematic (Bellotti et al., 2013)
Defining the Concept of Video Games
According to Prensky (2001), video games typically consist of six key
elements which combine to engage the player. These elements include
aspects such as rules, goals/objectives, outcomes and feedback,
conflict/competition, interaction and representation or story. Griffiths
(1999) presented a review of the literature on video gaming and aggression,
and within it highlighted nine distinct categories into which video games
can be placed. These categories are presented in Table 5.1 above.
Importantly, only the categories puzzlers and weird games are seen to
include elements that are directly linked to aspects of education (Griffiths,
1999), although the research literature reviewed below notes the impact of
games from wider categories on other cognitive skills.
 Source: Griffiths (1999)
Eichenbaum et al. (2014) noted that one particular type of video game, that
of action video games (or ‘shoot ’em ups’ to use Griffiths’ terminology),
has been associated with a wide range of proposed benefits. These games
are typified by fast-paced action and a heavy reliance on attention to keep
track of many items moving simultaneously. Such games have been notably
linked to improvements in aspects of low-level attentional processes as well
as aspects of higher-level cognitive functions. The first part of this chapter
will focus directly on these types of action video games (AVGs) and explore
how they have been proposed to improve aspects of cognition. In the latter
part of the chapter I will explore the rise of brain training, which, although
it has some links to aspects of video game play, is more specifically
designed with the aims of enhancing targeted cognitive skills as well as
overall cognitive functioning.
How Do You Examine the Impact of Video Games
on Cognition?
Studies exploring the impact of AVGs on perceptual and cognitive
processes usually conform to one of two experimental paradigms. In the
first type, researchers will assign participants to groups based on their level
of previous expertise with AVGs, this being either novice or expert
(Eichenbaum et al., 2014). Researchers will then explore whether there are
any specific differences according to a variety of aspects of cognition (e.g.
object tracking or a test of visual spatial memory). However, there is an
issue with experiments of this type when it comes to making a causative
link between the increased accuracy or speed noted in AVG players and
their use of AVGs. It could be that those who play such games already have
a pre-existing difference in these abilities, hence they are more likely to
seek out the challenges that are presented by action video gaming
(Eichenbaum et al., 2014). In order to overcome this methodological
shortcoming researchers may instead implement the second type of
experimental design. In this option they will search for a sample of
participants who have no previous experience of playing AVGs. These
participants are then asked to complete a battery of cognitive and perceptual
tasks to establish a base-rate measure (Boot et al., 2008). Then participants
are engaged in a period of practice where they play AVGs for a period of up
to 21 hours, after which they are asked to complete the same tasks that they
did in the initial stages of the research. The premise of such experiments is
to establish whether practice on AVGs can produce a difference in the skills
that have been measured. This performance is contrasted with a similar
group of participants who have not engaged in the same practice on AVGs,
but who have been typically using something from the non-action video-
game genre (something riveting like Solitaire or Minesweeper!).
Eichenbaum et al. do point out that in most instances the non-action video
game is matched for level of interest, engagement and fun, but lacks the
slash/hack/shoot aspect that is integrated into so many AVGs.
The Early Days of Research: Video Games for
Training and Research
In the very early days of video gaming, research focused more directly on
basic elements such as improvements in reaction times. For instance Clark
et al. (1987) demonstrated that a period of seven weeks of game play
significantly improved the reaction times of elderly adults (57–83 years old)
in comparison with a control group that did not play video games. A few
years later a special issue of the academic journal Acta Psychologica was
entirely devoted to the exploration of a video game named Space Fortress.
Space Fortress was a little different from those games that had traditionally
appeared in video game arcades of the time, and perhaps would not have
gained the same popularity as others such as Frogger, Pac Man or Donkey
Kong. However, Space Fortress was important in one key respect – it had
been designed by psychologists for the sole purpose of being a training and
research tool (Mané and Donchin, 1989). The objectives behind the game
play of Space Fortress were pretty simple in contrast to some of the more
contemporary AVGs such as Call of Duty. The task for the player was to
shoot missiles at a space fortress in order to destroy it (1989). In addition to
this the player must dodge missiles that are being fired by the space fortress
as well as avoiding damage to their ship from mines that have been
scattered around the playing area.
Researchers used the game in a variety of settings, noting that there was an
enhancement in some skills that were not directly linked to video gaming.
For example, Frederiksen and White (1989) noted that young adults who
played Space Fortress performed significantly better than a control group in
a test of physics exploring how acceleration affects the motion of objects. In
research by Gopher et al. (1994), Space Fortress was used to explore the
transfer of skills in Israeli Airforce cadets. The researchers who
implemented this noted that those cadets who played the game as part of
their training significantly outperformed a group who had no experience of
the game on tests of flight performance. This again demonstrated that the
skills acquired through playing the game actually transferred over into
complex visuo-motor skills that were relevant for flight control (Boot et al.,
2008; Gopher et al., 1994). Researchers have suggested that this skill cross-
over is related directly to the concurrent cognitive demands of the task with
the addition of a requirement to engage in fine motor controls. Later
research by Stern et al. (2013) showed that engaging older adults (mean age
of 65) in the use of Space Fortress for a period of 36 one-hour sessions
showed an improvement in a measure of executive control function.
Enhancement in Visual Perception
It has been noted that there have been improvements in contrast sensitivity
which Eichenbaum et al. (2014) define as the ‘ability to detect small
incremental changes in shades of grey (p. 56). Li et al. (2009) also noted a
significant capacity for AVG players to outperform non-video game (NVG)
players in the ability to detect minute changes in shades of grey. These
researchers then went on to demonstrate it was actually engaging in AVG
play that produced these differences in this perceptual capacity. Green and
Bavelier (2007) also noted the superior performance of AVG players on
tests of ‘crowded acuity’ or the capacity to pick out individual targets
within a display containing a high number of distractors. Eichenbaum et al.
(2014) noted that this has an interesting link to the process of reading as we
rarely look at the individual letters but rather the word or sentences. Such a
suggestion links well to research that has demonstrated an improvement in
reading speed without any residual loss of accuracy in children suffering
from dyslexia (Franceschini et al., 2013). Work by Appelbaum et al. (2013)
noted that AVG players displayed an improved sensitivity to visual
stimulus, meaning that they were are able to ‘take in’ more visual
information in contrast with their NVG player counterparts. However, there
was no specific difference in the amount of information that could be
retained between NVG players and AVGs, demonstrating that experience
only impacts on the initial detection of information.
Improvements in Selective Visual Attention
Beyond the proposed improvements in aspects of low-level perceptual
abilities, AVGs have also been demonstrated to improve aspects of visual
selective attention. This is an essential cognitive capacity that allows the
individual to isolate key elements from within their current visual
environment and to select these for further processing. In this instance AVG
players demonstrate a superior capacity to be able to identify critical
elements within such displays whilst also being able to filter out and ignore
those elements that are not relevant to the current task (Feng et al., 2007;
Green and Bavelier, 2003, 2006b; Spence and Feng, 2010).
A great deal of the work exploring the impact playing video games has had
upon aspects of human cognition has focused directly on cognitive skills
such as perception and attention. This includes work by Green and Bavelier
(2006a), who explored the differences between video gamers and non-video
gamers and differences in visuospatial attention. Their work showed that
those in the video gaming group showed improved performance in the
capacity to pick out the appearance of target objects that fell outside of the
central focus of attention. They also noted that video game players adapted
this level of focus according to the level of perceptual load (or the amount
of items they viewed within the display). In cases where there were few
items and perceptual load was low, video game players were more able to
attend to the peripheral aspects of the display. This would appear to map
onto game play, where a lull in the action would present a prospective
moment to gather thoughts and to scan the environment for new potential
threats. On the other hand, where perceptual load was deemed to be high
and multiple targets were presented on the screen the focus remained
central. This would appear to again mimic the action of most video games
in instances where attack from multiple enemies would engage the process
of self-preservation, hence trying to eradicate the closest and most
dangerous threats (Boot et al., 2008).
In other research that has used a paradigm from cognitive psychology
termed the ‘attentional blink’ it has been shown that AVG playing improves
the capacity of participants to keep track of items over a period of time. In
the traditional attention blink paradigm participants are asked to watch a
stream of visually presented items that are presented in black. One item, the
target, is presented in white (the first target or T1), and in some trials this
white target is closely followed by the appearance of a black ‘X’ (the
second target or T2). Once the trial has ended participants are asked to
indicate whether they have seen the black ‘X’, with the attentional blink
phenomenon being the finding that in the majority of cases the participants
will miss the appearance of such an object (Shapiro et al., 1997). Oei and
Patterson (2013) conducted a number of cognitive tests exploring the link
between enhancements in cognitive abilities and video gaming. They noted
that for those who had been trained using the AVG, the attentional blink
was completely eliminated, a phenomenon which has also been noted by
others (e.g. Green and Bavelier, 2003).
The multiple object tracking task (MOT; see Sears and Pylyshyn, 2000) has
also been widely used to explore the impact of action video gaming and
visual selective attention. There are a number of variations to the MOT
task, but the essential premise is that participants are shown a number of
identical objects on the screen, of which a sub-set is highlighted as targets
to be tracked. These targets are then moved around the screen alongside the
other identical items in the visual display. After a period of time the random
movement stops and participants are asked to identify the target items
identified at the start of the trial. A variety of researchers have noted
enhanced performance on the MOT task by those experienced in AVGs as
well as improvements in performance after training (Green and Bavelier,
2003, 2006; Oei and Patterson, 2013). These improvements in the visual
element of working memory have also been supported by research that has
focused on children. Findings have demonstrated that children who
frequently played AVGs had an increased capacity to keep track of target
items on screen more accurately in comparison with those who had not
engaged in AVG play (Eichenbaum et al., 2014; Trick et al., 2005).
Other researchers have, however, raised issues with the results from these
studies, in particular the findings from the original study presented by
Green and Bavelier (2003) as well as those presented by Feng et al. (2007).
The findings from these studies concluded that video game players
exhibited levels of temporal attention, spatial awareness and attentional
capacity that were superior to those possessed by non-video game players.
However, Murphy and Spence (2009) noted no such differences between
those who played video games and those who did not, further suggesting
more work was needed to be completed in the area in order to fully
understand the impact gaming has on visual attention.
Improvements in Higher Order Cognitive
Functioning
Boot et al. (2008) moved away from the previous narrow focus on the
perceptual elements of engaging in video game play. Instead their work
looked directly at what are commonly viewed as being higher-level
cognitive functions or those which relate to executive functioning. In their
study they manipulated the type of game the individuals were playing and
then tested them on aspects of performance for a number of cognitive
abilities including memory and reasoning. Participants played either a fast-
paced first-person shooter/combat game (Medal of Honour), a puzzle game
(Tetris) or a strategy/role-playing game (Rise of Nations). The researchers
proposed that the first-person shooter would present the best mechanism for
an improvement in both visual and spatial attention. On the other hand, the
strategy game would aid in improving executive control as this has
elements of planning involved within it, and finally the puzzle game would
assist in improving spatial skills given the requirement to rotate shapes. The
researchers asked participants to complete 20 hours of video game play,
with cognitive and perceptual tests being implemented before the practice
started, after 10 hours of practice and then after 21 hours. In their results
Boot et al. (2008) noted that for many of the tasks tested there was some
level of improvement in the practice groups in comparison with their pre-
test scores, but in many of the tests they failed to reach a suitable level of
statistical significance. In their comparison between expert and non-expert
video gamers they did note that experts were better able to track objects that
were moving at speed, could perform more accurately in a test of visual
short-term memory, were able to switch between two different tasks quicker
and make decisions about the match between rotated objects more quickly
and accurately than non-experts. However, the level of practice that was
given to participants on each of the three types of games failed to produce
changes in performance that could match those of the expert gamers in the
initial exploration.
One interesting aspect that was mentioned in the study by Boot et al. was
the make-up of the sample for the longitudinal training groups. There was a
high percentage of females in these groups, with a potential for such an
issue to bias the results. For instance, differences in spatial cognition have
been well recognised in the research literature (Geary et al., 2000). In the
context of video gaming, earlier work by Feng et al. (2007) noted that
females benefitted more than males when engaged in video gaming practice
for improvements in tests of spatial cognition. In Feng et al.’s study both
males and females were compared before and after ten hours of AVG
practice. The findings demonstrated that females improved significantly
more in detecting a target object within the display in comparison with
males (55‒72 per cent for females in comparison with 68‒78 per cent for
males). This research not only goes to demonstrate the impact video gaming
can have upon underlying cognitive processing, but can also obliterate well-
observed gender differences.
Aspects of problem solving have also been explored in the context of video
gaming with some limited findings. For example, Steinkuehler and Duncan
(2008) examined exchanges on the discussion forums related to the role-
playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). They were looking for evidence of
scientific thought, specifically related to theorising about elements related
to in-game play. They found that there was something termed ‘social
knowledge construction’; the researchers present this as a process of
collective development in understanding, usually through a mechanism of
joint problem solving. They also found some evidence for aspects of
system- and model-based reasoning, which requires an understanding of
how certain processes interact and cause an impact on or change in other
elements within that system. However, there were some residual
methodological problems with the study, with one point being that there
was no way of knowing whether this type of specific discussion was linked
to the type of game being played or was common across all genres (it
should be noted that WoW is more strategy-based, hence doesn’t fit directly
into the realm of AVGs). Also, it could be that those who are attracted to
playing these types of games already have a higher level of scientific
knowledge and awareness, rather than the development of such a skill being
fostered through the playing of the game (Steinkuehler and Duncan, 2008).
Other findings have come from research that has used a mechanism of
thinking out loud when participants are playing video games. In one study
by Blumberg and colleagues (2008) participants were asked to tell the
experimenter what they were thinking about whilst they were playing the
well-known game Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (terribly addictive, very
annoying!). They noted that those participants who engaged in more
frequent video game play demonstrated a higher degree of insight (typified
as novel approaches to in-game challenges) or more discussion about
specific game strategies (such as what type of move is best used to kill off a
certain type of enemy). However, other researchers such as Adachi and
Willoughby (2013) have questioned the extent to which these problem-
based skills could be extended out into wider problem-solving activities that
are not specific to the game that is being played.
Sustained Attention, Impulsiveness and Vigilance
These aspects all link to the capacity of the individual to pay attention to
elements for a longer period of time, and require aspects of visual working
memory to be engaged whilst avoiding the urge to attend to distractions
(Evenden, 1999; Logan et al., 1997; Wittmann and Paulus, 2008). Research
exploring the impact of video games on the capacity for individuals to
remain focused and on task has, however, presented some paradoxical
results. As Gentile et al. (2012) noted, exploring the impact of AVGs on
these elements requires individual differences to be taken into account
before any real differences can be examined. However, they did find
evidence to suggest that once these individual differences had been
controlled for, those who played AVG demonstrated higher levels of
impulsivity and had greater problems in terms of the capacity to focus
attention. They also noted that this relationship goes both ways, inasmuch
as individuals with issues related to attention and impulsivity will also have
a proclivity to spend more time playing AVGs. Gentile et al. (2012)
explored the reasons for the link between engaging in AVGs and associated
problems with attention. It should be noted that although this work does not
specifically mention aspects of Internet use, the association is hard not to
make, with other work by Sun et al. (2009) noting similar findings.
The first possible explanation for the attraction to AVGs (as well as digital
media in general) is one of excitement. Now let’s be honest, being seated in
front of any game that is not work is far more attractive when we are faced
with the alternative. Indeed, as I am sitting here writing this book chapter,
the lure of other more hedonistic endeavours is a far more appealing
thought, but, fortunately for you, I have a great level of impulsivity control.
However, the lure of the television, the Internet and AVGs is an obvious one
when it is contrasted with the routine of work. There are flashy graphics,
excitement, fun and attention-grabbing shiny things that make them a more
plausible option compared with the joys of writing yet another report or
essay. Many games use the notion of an ‘orientating reflex’ (Sokolov,
1963), something that was previously introduced back in Chapter 4. This
exogenous shift means that we will turn and face the direction of something
that grabs our attention, particularly in environments of low-level
stimulation. The aspects that grab our attention also do something else: they
act as an ongoing engagement mechanism, attracting more and more
attention from the individual. The suggestion made in the excitement
hypothesis is that for many, these features offer the individual a level of
interest that sits outside of their normal everyday activities. If the individual
is subjected to these exciting and attentionally enticing activities for a
period of time, the individual’s expectations for what is a normal level of
stimulation will alter. When there is a greater discrepancy between the more
interesting and stimulating activities and those that are more mundane and
run-of-the-mill, the greater the chance that attentional difficulties will begin
to arise (Gentile et al., 2012).
In contrast to these findings, other researchers have noted that AVG players
have a greater level of resistance when it comes to preventing distraction
from exogenous stimuli. Research presented by Cain et al. noted that when
compared with NVG players, those who actively played AVGs could resist
the attentional capture of task-irrelevant information in order to focus more
directly on task-relevant, goal-orientated information. Such work is also
supported by other work that demonstrates AVG players have a greater
capacity for cognitive control, perhaps linked to the process of game play
which requires focus on concurrent information in order to prevent the
player from being attacked (Cain et al., 2012)
Brain Training: Does It Really Work?
There has been much hype over recent years about the use of digital
technology, in particular the notion of brain-training games. There have
been some high-profile cases in the media where companies have been
fined considerable amounts of money for making a variety of claims that
are not substantiated by the research. In 2016 Lumos Labs were fined $2
million (£1.4 million) for making claims that go far beyond the data. Lumos
promoted a suite of 52 games, each one targeting specific cognitive skills.
The company published a self-funded report that asserts that the entire suite
of exercises is a ‘gym’ for the brain (Shute et al., 2015). The claims made
suggest that the program can purportedly train specific areas of the brain,
and if used for a period of 10–15 minutes three or four times per week it
could help users maximise their potential in every aspect of their life. Now,
apart from the fact that maximising potential appears to be a little bit vague,
the company also claimed that the games could also alleviate the symptoms
of more serious ailments such as dementia, stroke and brain injury
(www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-352417780).
In this section the aim is to explore the claims that have been made for brain
training, and to identify the relevant research that has either found support
for or debunked these claims completely.
What Is Brain Training?
The concept of braining training is more widely viewed as ‘cognitive
training’ in the wider research literature. The theoretical perspective follows
an analogy linked to learning and improving a particular skill. For example,
when you start off doing something like playing darts, you might find it
hard to hit the dartboard, but after a period of time you get better, your co-
ordination will improve and you will become more proficient.
Brain training relies very heavily on concepts that are directly related to
neuroplasticity, something that was introduced in Chapter 3 in relation to
the digital immigrant/native debate. To be clear, neuroplasticity suggests
that we can bring about changes in the underlying structure and therefore
function in the brain as a response to stimulation from the environment
(Rabipour and Raz, 2012; Shaw et al., 1994). The attractiveness of this
argument means that cognitive training could span a variety of age groups,
from the developing brain to one that is in cognitive decline due to old age.
The latter is inherently attractive, particularly when the global population is
getting older and the potential burden for age-related cognitive decline on
already struggling health providers is of central concern for many
(Rabipour and Raz, 2012). As we will see in the following section, brain
training has been used extensively to explore how cognitive training could
be useful in staving off age-related cognitive decline, with Rabipour and
Raz (2012) presenting an overview of this research and its ultimate value.
Their conclusion is that whilst brain training does improve specific
elements of cognitive function, it does not appear to be effective at
improving overall global cognitive functioning.
Transfer Effects
Something that does crop up frequently in the literature on brain training is
the notion of transfer effects. The concept of transfer effects has been
studied extensively over the past century or so (see Barnett and Ceci, 2002,
for a very meticulous review of the research in this area) and refers to how
training in one task can benefit or improve another. Transfer effects can be
viewed according to how ‘close’ they are to the original trained skill and are
classified in terms of their ‘distance’ from the skill that is the focus of
current training. Near transfer in cognitive training speak makes reference
to the way training impacts on similar types of skills to those being targeted.
If we take an example from our daily lives, this might be an improvement in
our hand-to-eye co-ordination as a result of training to play tennis. The key
here is that an improvement is noted on a similar but not identical skill or
task. In contrast, far transfer refers to a residual improvement in skills that
are outside the current focus of the training, such as finding an
improvement in mental arithmetic as a result of training to play tennis.
As we will discuss, the actual evidence for transfer effects is something of a
mixed bag, with some researchers finding evidence for this, whilst others
have found no such trends. There are a variety of issues that muddy the
interpretation of key findings, including aspects of methodological
inconsistencies as well as the issues with a clear definition of both transfer
effects (Barnett and Ceci, 2002).
Evidence for the Benefits?: Brain Training and Its
Benefits on the Developing Mind
Miller and Robertson (2010) presented a comparison between three distinct
conditions in an attempt to explore the claims that brain training could
improve cognitive functioning. In their research they used the popular
program Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training which was available on the
Nintendo DS Lite system. The program itself contained a variety of puzzles
that targeted mental calculations and memory retention. However, as Miller
and Robertson (2010) noted, there is no evidence from empirical studies
examining the objective benefits of such a program. They also included
another educational intervention, termed ‘Brain Gym’, which posits that
aspects of physical movement facilitate a process of neurological
reorganisation. This in turn supposedly promotes ‘whole brain learning’
(Miller and Robertson, 2011; see also Dennison and Dennison, 1994). Brain
Gym has gained wide acceptance in an educational context, and according
to Miller and Robertson (2011) remains popular in classrooms as a
mechanism for enhancing the learning process.
Miller and Robertson’s (2011) study set out to explore which of these two
interventions could potentially improve the mental computation skills of
children aged 10–11. One group of participants used the brain-training
program installed in the Nintendo system, whilst another group engaged in
activities from the Brain Gym website. There was also a no-treatment
control condition group that essentially did nothing other than their regular
daily schoolwork. The results noted a significant difference between pre-
and post-test scores on mental arithmetic for both the brain-training group
and the no-intervention group. This would appear to indicate that doing
nothing is just as effective as doing something, but when we take a look at
the actual level of changes there is a key difference. For the brain-training
group, participants showed an improvement that was almost double that in
the control condition. This effect was also paired with a similar
improvement in time to complete a maths test, with those using the game
console to train showing a significant reduction compared with the other
two groups. The researchers do, however, note a degree of caution when
interpreting these results, given the small sample size of the study and the
lack of controls employed related to the expertise of the individual
delivering the Brain Gym sessions.
Jaeggi et al. (2011) explored the impact of cognitive training on transfer
effects into other areas of cognitive functioning, specifically that of fluid
intelligence. Fluid intelligence is often seen as the capacity to engage in
aspects of abstract reasoning as well as being able to understand and solve
less well-defined problems (Cattell, 1963). As noted by Jaeggi et al. (2011),
fluid intelligence is also important in many other respects, predominantly
because it can act as a predictor for both educational and professional
success (Deary et al., 2007; Rohde and Thompson, 2007; Spinath et al.,
2006). The study by Jaeggi et al. (2011) focused on school children aged 8–
9 and demonstrated that brain training did work, but there were some
moderators. First, the participants only showed beneficial transfer effects to
measures of fluid intelligence if they had demonstrated a high training gain
in the original working memory task. They also noted that group differences
in terms of the benefits of training appeared over time, and in the first three
weeks of training no consistent changes were noted. These differences were
also persistent, and lasted for at least a three-month period after training had
ceased. Such results are supported by earlier findings from Karbach and
Kray (2009), who noted that in task-switching training, participants
improved on aspects of fluid intelligence alongside aspects of verbal and
spatial working memory. However, more recent work by Xin et al. (2014)
noted no such improvement in a measure of fluid intelligence for a group of
participants aged 60–82, showing how disparate the findings from the
research literature in this area can be.
Impact on the Developing Mind: Using Brain
Training to Stave Off Cognitive Decline
As I introduced earlier, part of the push towards the development and use of
brain-training activities has been directly related to a potential way of
helping stave off cognitive decline, which comes about as a result of old
age. Researchers have explored using video games in an attempt to improve
the cognitive skills of older adults with some surprising successes (Basak et
al., 2008; Clark et al., 1987; Dustman et al., 1992). For example, Anguera et
al. (2013) explored an aspect of cognitive control in older adults, a
mechanism that allows us to undertake goal-directed behaviours in complex
environments. In their study, participants were asked to play a driving game
in which one group had to perform a multitasking activity (keeping track of
the car on the road as well as reporting back about information on the
screen). For those participants in this multitasking mode, it was found that
the residual costs associated with multitasking (in terms of the interference
associated with doing both tasks at once) were significantly reduced for
those aged 60–85). These gains were also noted for a period of six months
after the initial training, with further findings from brain-imaging data
showing that the age-related deficits in neural stimulation for cognitive
control were reversed through multitasking training. They also found
further transfer effects for aspects of enhanced sustained attention and
working memory, aspects that were not directly trained for in the original
task.
Additional research by Nouchi et al. (2012, 2013) also demonstrated that
the use of a specific brain-training program could also improve executive
functioning and processing speed. Two groups of participants were asked to
play either Brain Age, another creation from the mind of Ryuta Kawashima
marketed by Nintendo, or Tetris. They engaged in playing the game for 15
mins for five days per week over a period of four weeks and were assessed
on four key cognitive measures comprising global cognitive status (which
included memory for space/time, memory and attention as well as language
and visuospatial skills), executive functioning, attention and processing
speed. Both groups demonstrated a significant improvement in overall
game performance from the first time they played the game up until the end
of the training period. For the Brain Age group, significant changes were
noted in the scores for executive functioning and processing speed, but no
such differences were noted for measures of global cognitive status and
measures of attention when compared to the Tetris group. These findings
suggest significant transfer effects for near cognitive skills related to the
areas being trained within the game itself.
Brain Training: When Doesn’t It Work?
Just to throw a fly in the otherwise untainted ointment of brain training,
there have been some dissenting voices from the world of research.
Buitenweg et al. (2012) conducted an extensive review of the literature
related to brain training and the senior population and made a variety of
broad conclusions. They noted that the results from across the studies they
reviewed presented little consistency, and the evidence for transfer effects
was limited. Other researchers such as Dahlin and colleagues (2008) noted
that transfer effects in the context of working memory training were either
small or non-existent.
In one of the largest studies of its kind, Owen et al. (2010) found no
consistent evidence for transfer effects from brain training into other skills
in a sample of 52,617 participants aged 18–60. Participants engaged in a
process of training over a six-week period that included a variety of tasks
aimed at improving reasoning, memory, planning and attention. Although
the researchers did find a significant improvement in the task on which
participants were trained, these effects failed to carry over into untrained
tasks even though they shared related cognitive processes. In order to
quantify the level of transfer effects elicited, they suggested a partial
improvement in memory equivalent to remembering an extra 300th of a
digit. Based on their calculations, they suggested it would take an additional
four years of training to show an improvement where participants could
remember one whole extra digit. The control group actually presented an
improvement in memory retention even without any training, demonstrating
the issues related to brain training (Owen et al., 2010).
Shute et al. (2015) compared the use of a well-known video game (Portal
2) and the software suite provided by Lumos Labs (Luminosity). Portal 2,
for those who haven’t experienced the joy of playing it (and trust me, if you
start, be prepared to lose part of your life!), is a first-person puzzle game.
The player has to solve a series of puzzles using a variety of tools including
a ‘portal gun’ that can create a portal between two distant points through
which the player can travel or transfer objects.
Shute et al. (2015) presented an interesting set of findings from that counter
some of the claims made by those who extoll the virtues of brain-training
programs. In their study, participants engaged in either an eight-hour period
of playing Portal 2 or the activities presented by Luminosity. They found a
significant improvement in three key skills ‒ problem solving, spatial skills
and persistence ‒ but for those participants who had been playing Portal 2
and not those engaged in the activities presented by Luminosity.
Summary
In this chapter I have aimed to introduce a very broad review of the
research that has been conducted into the impact video games and aspects
of brain training have on human cognition. As I hope you can see, the
findings from research present something of a mixed bag when it comes to
making any conclusive statements. One of the key issues that needs
resolution if we are to be able to make more direct links between video
gaming and subsequent enhancements in cognition is the disparity in
methodology between studies (Boot et al., 2011). However, research has
noted that those who play video games, or who undergo a period of training
on them, can experience benefits in cognitive skills such as sustained
attention, spatial awareness and attentional control to name but a few.
Research has also presented a focus on the potential for video games to be
used specifically as a training mechanism to facilitate the improvement of
cognitive skills. This focus, stemming from the area of brain training, has
presented a number of attractive potential benefits. These relate directly to
enhancing cognitive skills in younger children and adults as well as
providing a cost-effective mechanism for reversing aspects of age-related
cognitive decline in the elderly. However, as attractive as brain training
appears, there are the same issues with this type of training as there are for
the use of video gaming on more general aspects of cognition. Some
researchers have noted that brain training can provide an effective
mechanism for training specific cognitive skills as well as presenting far
transfer effects in untrained cognitive skills. However, others have noted no
such benefits in the context of transfer effects, again demonstrating the
importance of more research in this area.

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6 Multitasking
Learning Objectives
To define the concept of multitasking in the context of the digital
environment;
to explore the theoretical underpinnings of multitasking from an
information processing perspective;
to highlight the impact multitasking can have on task
performance;
to explore the concept of media multitasking and examine how
this can impact on performance;
to examine the literature on smartphone and mobile phone use
whilst performing other tasks to highlight the clear safety issues
of such activities.
Overview
I would like to beg for the reader’s indulgence here and in doing so ask you
to ponder the following quotes:
[T]he ability to multitask is considered to be a desirable job skill by
many employers, which is not surprising given that, on average,
workers shift between tasks every three minutes. (Monk et al., 2008:
299)
We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a
place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce
commodity is increasingly human attention. (Satya Nadella, CEO
Microsoft, 10 July 2014 (http://news.microsoft.com/ceo/bold-
ambition/)
So that’s it – even if you have never multitasked in your life, you’d better
get used to it. There is a certain inevitability about the quote from Monk et
al. (2008), which would indicate that in today’s high-paced, digitally
enhanced work environment the skill of multitasking is something that, if
you haven’t got it, you’d better get it, and soon. However, there is ample
research that has explored the impact of individuals trying to do more than
two things at once, and the results aren’t really that great. For example, the
research on divided attention examines our ability to attend to two things at
once, with the key findings demonstrating that there are subsequent trade-
offs in terms of performance and accuracy (Chun, 2011; Koch et al., 2010;
Rosen, 2011; Wood and Cowan, 1995). The literature from psychology gets
a little confused when we start to talk about multitasking as a concrete
topic. Technically, multitasking doesn’t really exist; it is a misnomer that is
usually perpetrated by recruitment consultants and those who like to think
they are good at doing two things at once. What most people would call
multitasking is actually more accurately viewed as task switching. We are
often presented with the illusion of multitasking as we are switching
between tasks at such speed it appears that we are actually doing these
things concurrently. Task switching can also be apparent when we get
interrupted whilst we are focused on a primary task, something that we will
look at in more detail later on.
Irrespective of how we conceptualise it, the term ‘multitasking’ has entered
into everyday language and is used to describe a skill that is viewed as
being good, but the consequences of engaging in such behaviour are far
from positive (Becker et al., 2013). The term ‘polychronicity’ in this
context refers to an individual’s preference to engage in multitasking as
opposed to performing one task at any one time (Slocombe and Bluedorn,
1999). The notion of polychronicity is not a cognitively-based skill, but
more a trait-based preference for shifting attention between ongoing tasks
(Poposki and Oswald, 2009). However, research from Sanbonmatsu et al.
(2013) would suggest that individuals have a massive disconnect between
their perceived ability to multitask and their actual ability. Findings from
their research showed that scores on a measure of multitasking were
negatively correlated to self-reported multitasking activity. Similarly this
measure was also negatively correlated to self-reported incidences of using
a mobile phone whilst driving. So in essence it would appear that those who
are least able to multitask are indeed those who are engaging in it more.
Multitasking is presented as a mechanism through which individuals are
able to achieve more in a shorter space of time, but what this chapter will
do is explore the reality behind these anecdotal claims.
The Origins of Multitasking
The actual term ‘multitasking’ has been adopted from computer science and
originally made reference to the capacity for computers to complete a
number of key operations simultaneously (Rosen, 2008). In contrast to
computers, humans do not possess the hard-wired logic that allows such
complex processes to be undertaken in the same space and time, and
multitasking has taken on a variety of different connotations. According to
Rosen (2008), the term multitasking has evolved (or, if you prefer to use the
original term presented by Rosen, ‘hijacked’) to describe ‘the human
attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as
possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as
possible’ (p. 105). Other researchers, such as Delbridge (2000), have
described the concept of multitasking as the attempt to perform multiple
goals in the same general time period by ‘engaging in frequent switches
between individual tasks” (p. 3). Yet others, such as Adler and Benbunan-
Fich (2012), have noted that multitasking occurs when the individual is
seen to shift their attention in order to perform several independent but
concurrent computer-related tasks. It should be noted that these researchers
place a direct emphasis on the use of computer technology in the process of
multitasking, something that will become even more apparent as we move
on through this chapter. Benbunan-Fich et al. (2011) noted that there are
two key principles that should be adhered to when attempting to define an
activity as multitasking. These are as follows:
There must be some aspect of task independence, so that each of the
tasks being conducted is self-contained and there is no cross-over in
terms of the cognitive processes being used to conduct them.
There is also an element of performance concurrency; this means that
the two tasks are carried out in the same time frame, and there is some
temporal overlap within a specific time period.
What is apparent from the definitions presented by Rosen and Delbridge is
the repetition of the word ‘attempt’. This resonates well with previous
research from cognitive psychology which indicates that doing more than
one task at the same time is something that isn’t guaranteed to produce the
best results. The other key aspect that strikes you when you are reading
these definitions is the heady mix of technology within the melee of
concurrent cognitive processes. Rosen (2008) presents a short but incisive
discussion that essentially debunks the notion that multitasking is actually a
possible cognitive process, and there is a great deal of evidence that
suggests that this is true. Even James (1890) presented an exploration of
multitasking, and viewed it in terms of a child-like inability to focus
attention on one key task. Perhaps James had the fortune to view the future
where the young and old alike are engaging in two tasks at any one time,
usually accompanied by social networking apps, digital media and our
beloved shiny smartphones.
Rather than multitasking being a state of two cognitive tasks engaged in at
the same time, Dzubak (2007) argued that multitasking is more likely to be
a sequence (hence something that occurs in serial rather than parallel order)
of processes that occur in rapid succession. This would also mean that
multitasking is essentially task switching, a process that enables the
individual to select information for attention, process that information and
then encode it ready to be stored and then acted upon. For writers such as
Delbridge (2000), the notion of ‘task switching’ is linked to attention
switching – there must be a process through which attention is re-focused
from the current task to the secondary, switched-to task. We will come to
aspects of task switching when we explore the notion of interruptions in
Chapter 7, but for now it is important for the reader to understand the cross-
over between these two concepts.
Previous Research
As indicated at the start of this chapter, there is ample evidence from the
literature in cognitive psychology that discusses the capacity for humans to
perform more than one task at once. The conclusion from most researchers
is that there is little capacity for two competing cognitive tasks to be
conducted at the same time without there being some residual impact on
performance (e.g. see Broadbent, 1957; Kahneman, 1973; Pashler et al.,
2001). Such a suggestion links into the concept that attention is a limited
resource and has a finite quality attached to it. This therefore means that the
individual cannot attend to an unlimited amount of information
simultaneously, and that by dividing resources between tasks, poorer
performance will be evident. An example of this has been provided in work
by Rubinstein et al. (2001), who noted that where individuals do engage in
multitasking, the tasks take longer to complete and are usually accompanied
by more errors in contrast to when they are focusing on a single task.
How Do We Organise Multiple Tasks?
When we explore the research into the concept of multitasking there has
been some attempt to understand how this process fits into the way in which
we accomplish tasks. Bluedorn et al. (1992) presented an exploration of
how multiple tasks are organised in the context of three distinct temporal
mechanisms. These essentially look at how timing comes into the process
of conducting more than one thing at once, and are presented as follows:
 Sequential processing: Each task starts after the previous one has been
finished. In this context there is no concurrency between tasks. In this
instance this process is far removed from the notion of multitasking as
the individual isn’t conducting multiple tasks in the same time frame.
Parallel processing: All the things we are doing are attended to at the
same time, hence there is the highest level of task overlap or
concurrency. The reality of this process is actually something of a near
impossibility, but we can gain the illusion of doing two things at the
same time. Similarly, attention is very hard to divide across multiple
tasks unless there are key differences in the type of attention being
used (such as writing and listening to music at the same time).
However, as we will see when we look at media multitasking later on,
even this has its own set of issues.
Interleaving: During the performance of a current task attention is
reallocated through either voluntary or involuntary actions to another
task. There is the potential for the primary task to be resumed, but the
actual process of resuming the original task will actually have costs
attached to it. This mechanism is the one that is more akin to task
switching and can be linked to two key reasons for suspending the
original task:
An external disruption: Here there is something within our
immediate environment that requires our urgent attention,
therefore the current goal is displaced (e.g. getting a text message
from a friend who has some ‘urgent’ gossip whilst you are writing
an essay?!).
An internal decision to stop: This may be due to an obstacle that
currently prevents the completion of the current goal or task. It
might be related to a lack of specific information or resources
(you can’t make that cake if you suddenly realise you haven’t got
any eggs!). The goal will become suspended and another goal will
become the focus of attention (going to buy some eggs) until the
obstacle is removed. These are often termed ‘self-imposed
interruptions’ and are something that we will be exploring later
on in Chapter 7 (Adler and Benbunan-Fich, 2012).
Theories for Multitasking
Limited Resource Capacity Models
As I have stressed throughout the first few chapters of this book, a variety
of researchers have highlighted the notion that our cognitive resources are
limited, directly associated with the limited capacity of human processing
(Lang, 2000). When we have a number of tasks that have processing
requirements that exceed the available resources we have, we usually see
some form of decrement in performance. This could be in the form of errors
or a longer time taken to perform the tasks. If you think about this in the
context of your finances – if you only have £50 to spend on a pair of
trousers and some decent shoes (for decent, don’t go mad, this isn’t a night
out on the town, this is an emergency purchase!), and the shoes cost £30
and the trousers cost £40, you are essentially stuffed – so this is mostly a
big decrement in performance.
Multiple Resource Theories
The limited capacity theory would suggest that there is just one common
pool of resources available for us to use when conducting a task (so in the
case of the previous example, this would be our wallet or purse containing
some money). In contrast, the multiple resource theory proposed by
researchers such as Wickens (2002) suggests that we have a set of
specialised resources that subsume specific functions related to cognition
and perception. The theory holds that when we have two tasks that require
the involvement of the same resources, competition will occur, thus
resulting in a similar decrement in performance (2002). For example, this
could be multitasking on two activities that require an individual to pay
attention to two visual tasks at the same time – obviously, as these two tasks
share the same requirement for visual attention, there will be some issues
related to performance. Individuals are often wise to this process, and for
the most part will choose to multitask in a way that actually minimises
disruption. For example, work by Carrier et al. (2009) would indicate that
people are more likely to text or surf the Internet whilst listening to music,
meaning there is less chance for competition between resources. However,
as we will see in the context of media multitasking later, this isn’t always a
guaranteed strategy.
The Unified Theory of Multitasking
There has been some attempt to move towards a theoretical
conceptualisation that focuses directly on multitasking. The Unified Theory
of Multitasking Continuum (Salvucci et al., 2009) is an amalgamation of a
number of other theoretical positions. The theory itself views multitasking
on a continuum (see Figure 6.1) where processes are viewed in the context
of the time frame in which they occur. At the one end we have actions or
tasks that are taking place within a matter of seconds, for instance the
capacity to drive and talk at the same time. This requires an element of
simultaneous processing where there is less control over switching between
tasks as well as less time. In contrast, sequential multitasking could also
perhaps be seen more as task switching, in which there is more direct
control over the processes that are taking place and indeed more time
between the switches.
The first component of the Unified Theory of Multitasking is the ACT-R
Cognitive architecture proposed by Anderson et al. (2004). The main
purpose of Anderson’s model was to be able to explore the processes
involved in cognition on a practical or functional level. The model contains
a number of individual modules each with their own respective purpose.
The first one of these is the declarative memory module that contains
information related to factual knowledge, including aspects such as episodic
memory or instructions related to the current task. There is also a goal
module, which contains information about the current goal for the system as
well as being able to keep track of the progress towards that particular goal.
The problem representation module holds representations of the
environment that are incomplete, but which are essential for successful
completion of the current task. This could be a sub-total for a mental
arithmetic problem or perhaps notes related to an essay or a report that is
being written. The final component, the procedural module, is the overall
controlling component that connects all of the other modules together.
According to Salvucci et al. (2009) the ACT-R model is important in one
key respect when it comes to multitasking as it allows the capacity for each
of these modules to act in parallel. However, more importantly each of the
modules can only be used in one single task at any one time.
Figure 6.1 Unified Theory of Multitasking Continuum
 Source: Salvucci et al. (2009)
The second component to this theory of multitasking is that of the threaded
cognition theory presented by Salvucci and Taatgen (2008). Essentially
each task is seen as being a thread of activity that can be interleaved
through the modules which make up the ACT-R model. Threaded cognition
allows for multiple tasks to be performed, but different tasks will compete
for different resources (or modules); the point at which these tasks compete
for the same module resources is the point at which interference is noted.
This perspective shares some commonality with the multiple resource
theory we have discussed above. The way this is presented in the threaded
cognition framework is that in the instance where two tasks require the
same module, one task or thread will be forced to wait its turn for the
required module to be released. Accordingly this waiting period will cause
a residual delay in task completion and produce an increase in the time it
takes to finish off the current task and resume the previous one; this is
referred to as the resumption lag (Salvucci et al., 2009).
The final element introduced by Salvucci et al. (2009) in the context of a
theory towards multitasking is that on the memory for goal theory (Altmann
and Trafton, 2002, 2004; Trafton et al., 2003). Where we are attempting to
multitask, the new task goal must appear within our attentional system at a
higher level of activation in comparison with the older tasks. After this
point, the memory trace for the old task will fade. The consequences of this
process mean that once the interrupting task is completed, the original task
will take longer to resume. This is due to the process of ‘reactivating’ the
memory trace of the older task that was interrupted, which means reviving
the relevant instructions for the task, the goals as well as the current level of
progress towards those goals. In the context of our present discussion,
memory for goal theory would highlight the existence of key threads that
exist according to each of the tasks the individual is undertaking. In the
situation where one task is presented at the same time as another, the older
thread is weakened and becomes faded, hence it will need more time to
resume later on.
For now the essential point to take away from this theory is that
multitasking as a process isn’t as clear cut as doing more than one thing at
any one time. As we can see from this basic introduction, even the process
of conceptualising the cognitive skills that underlie the process requires the
amalgamation of more than one specific theory. It would appear that, at
least from the information processing perspective, multitasking can and will
result in a decrement in performance somewhere along the line, and as we
will see in the next section, such incidences have also been presented in the
research literature.
Multitasking in the Digital Age: Media
Multitasking
Right, now we have got the boring theory out of the way, let us turn our
attention to the actual research that has been conducted looking at
multitasking in the context of digital media and technology. There is a
surprising amount of research that covers this topic, with one of the most
popular topics being that of media multitasking. To put this in a nutshell,
the notion of media multitasking (or MMT) is the practice of engaging in
more than one form of media at any given time (Ralph et al., 2013). This
should start to sound familiar to lots of people, particularly those of us who
like to surf the web … whilst listening to music on our iPads … with the
TV on … whilst we send a text … when we are doing work. The picture
painted is all too familiar, but one that researchers have noted could have
serious implications for our capacity to perform simple tasks.
Let us begin with some kind of sense check to put this type of work into
context. Rideout et al. (2010) noted that those aged 8–18 have significantly
increased the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at
any given time. Approximately a quarter of the participants questioned in
their study (29 per cent) said that they engaged in using two or more types
of media concurrently. Furthermore, the using of digital media in
multitasking was also apparent, with 48 per cent of young people saying
that they multitask either ‘some of the time’ or ‘most of the time’ when
playing video games, 46 per cent when using a computer and 73 per cent
when listening to music. The researchers also noted that those who fell into
the heavy media-use group (more than 16 hours per day) were more likely
to be getting into trouble to express feelings of sadness or unhappiness, or
were bored. Similarly, 47 per cent of all the heavy media users in the survey
said they usually got poorer grades in comparison with the moderate or
light users group. The research presented on media multitasking has
attempted to present some clear mechanisms for why high levels of MMT
could lead to residual decrements in academic attainment. The focus on
multitasking and education is something that we will be returning to in
Chapter 8 so I won’t dwell on it more here, but safe to say that the results
aren’t very promising.
In an original piece of work, Ophir et al. (2009) made the suggestion that
those who were frequently engaged in MMT possessed a different approach
to processing information in comparison with those who engage in MMT
on a less frequent basis. According to these researchers, the process of
consuming multiple streams of media at one time creates a cognitive bias in
high MMT individuals, which means that they are taking in all information
at any one time rather than just the relevant information they need. In this
regard they suggest those in the higher-level MMT band are typified as
follows:
They have a poorer capacity to ignore information that is irrelevant to
the tasks they are doing.
They are less likely to ignore information that is contained within
memory that is also not relevant to the current task.
They are also less effective at preventing the activation of information
related to previously completed tasks. Such suggestion is at odds with
the previous theories discussed above that would see successful task
 switching (which involves the completion of one task to take up
another one) as being critical to any multitasking behaviour.
The theoretical reasons as to why those who engage in high levels of MMT
are more prone to distraction were also the focus of some discussion in the
work by Ophir et al. (2009). They make two key suggestions:
High MMT individuals are more easily distracted by multiple streams
of media. This would suggest that they have a stimulus-driven
(exogenous) attentional bias, meaning they are constantly on the
lookout for new information within their immediate environment –
irrespective of its relevance to the current task. According to Ophir et
al. (2009) it would appear that those in the high MMT group actually
sacrifice focus on one specific task in order to allow other pieces of
information into their attentional field.
Low MMT individuals are much better at directing their attention
towards task-relevant information. This would suggest they are better
at focusing attention using a top-down (endogenous) process allowing
them to focus more easily on a single task.
There has been some work conducted into the concept of MMT since this
work by Ophir et al. (2009). For example Alzahabi and Becker (2013)
noted that those who reported as being in the high MMT group were
significantly better at switching between tasks in comparison with those in
the low MMT group. They also found no significant differences in the
ability to multitask between the high and low MMT groups. Additional
work by Minear et al. (2013) noted that those in the high MMT group
reported themselves as being more impulsive and performed less well on
tests of fluid intelligence in comparison with those in the low MMT group.
However, these researchers failed to find any support for the notion that
high MMT individuals were worse in a multitasking situation and were
unable to filter out irrelevant information.
Ralph et al. (2013) noted the disparity in such results, highlighting the fact
that the relationship between MMT and laboratory-based tests are not as
clear-cut as we would expect them to be. They presented their own set of
findings, which focused specifically on media multitasking alongside the
individuals’ own interpretation of their attentional control in daily life. The
study actually made a comparison between the frequency of participants,
engagement in MMT alongside incidences of attentional lapses they had
experienced during their daily lives. The findings from this study go some
way in supporting the original work by Ophir et al. (2013) where the level
at which individuals engaged in MMT was directly associated with their
level of inattention in daily life. Those reporting higher levels of MMT also
showed positive correlations with attentional failures in daily life,
symptomatic of things like sudden lapses in concentration or a spontaneous
capacity for mind wandering. They also found that there were no significant
differences between MMT groups and subsequent memory failures, which
was interpreted by the researchers as indicating that the issue is more
directed towards an attentional component rather than on related to
memory.
The results from Ralph et al. (2013) also noted that those with higher levels
of MMT were associated with individuals actively withdrawing elements of
attention and demonstrated limited awareness of real world events or those
related to past experiences. They were also more likely to display a number
of attentional failures that were linked directly to them doing other things
whilst failing to focus on current tasks. Ralph et al. (2013) again suggested
that such a finding might be more evidence that those who engage in higher
levels of MMT are more easily distracted compared with those in the lower
MMT groups. They presented a further notion that high MMT individuals
possess a higher threshold of arousal in comparison with those from the low
MMT group. This would mean that high MMT are actively seeking out
additional forms of stimulation (in the shape of additional media) in order
to satisfy this need.
We have to be careful when interpreting research such as this because the
directionality of the results isn’t entirely clear. For example, it could be that
being subjected to higher levels of MMT is actually creating these
underlying changes in attentional processes. However, it could also be
argued that these results could be linked to individual differences and may
highlight already established attentional problems. This could be the notion
that certain individuals could have an actual need or addiction to seek out
multiple streams of information (Ralph et al., 2013). Findings related to
individual differences in relation to multitasking are the focus of the next
section.
Individual Differences and Multitasking
Research has noted that some individuals do not show the expected
decrement in performance whilst being engaged in multitasking (Rubinstein
et al., 2001; Schumacher et al., 2001). The question remains as to why some
people are more affected in the context of multitasking than others, and
more importantly whether such elements can be trained so that an
improvement in performance can be found. Many researchers have pointed
towards underlying individual differences in cognitive processing that can
coincidentally be linked to differences noted in multitasking performance
(Brooking and Damos, 1991; Ishizaka et al., 2001). It should also be noted
that gender differences and the capacity to multitask have also been
debunked. For example, findings from Buser and Peter (2012) noted there
was no significant difference in ability to multitask between men and
women.
Elements of inhibitory control have been posited as one aspect of individual
differences that may predict the individual’s propensity for multitasking.
Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013) noted that two key traits, namely sensation
seeking and impulsivity (which is directly linked to aspects of attentional
control), have been widely associated with multitasking behaviour. In their
exploration of these factors, they noted previous work that suggested that
those who are categorised as high sensation seekers are more likely to
engage in multitasking as it presents a capacity for them to experience a
wider variety of sensations (Roberti, 2004; Sanbonmatsu et al., 2013;
Zuckerman and Kuhlman, 2000). Similarly they also noted that sensation
seekers are less likely to see loss in a negative light, meaning that they are
more likely to focus on the enjoyment aspect of multitasking irrespective of
the negatives (Franken et al., 1992; Horvath and Zuckerman, 1993;
Sanbonmatsu et al., 2013). The results from Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013)
supported the notion that sensation seekers do indeed show a higher
preference for multitasking, and were more likely to report MMT as well as
using a mobile phone whilst driving.
In wider research, Cain and Mitroff (2011) have also noted that certain
individuals will choose to pay attention to a broader area of their
environment, therefore meaning that they are more prone to distraction as
well as having the potential for engaging in a secondary task. This point
was also picked out by Sanbomatsu et al. (2013), who suggested that those
individuals who have a higher level of executive control are perhaps the
ones who are most likely to be able to multitask but are less likely to do so.
This comes through in the context of impulsivity, a dispositional trait that
has come into focus when discussing aspects of attentional control. For
example, Gentile et al. (2012) noted that those who played action video
games (AVGs) demonstrated higher levels of impulsivity and had greater
problems in their capacity to focus attention. They also noted that this
relationship goes both ways, inasmuch as individuals with issues related to
attention and impulsivity will also have a proclivity to spend more time
playing AVGs. Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013) also noted that those individuals
with a higher level of impulsivity also present an inability to focus directly
on the current task, often preferring to take on multiple tasks. Their findings
would again support the link between impulsivity, attentional control and an
inability to plan effectively, with each of these elements being positively
correlated to higher levels of self-reported multitasking. It would appear
that the preference to engage in multitasking is directly linked to an
inability to focus attention on one specific task in favour of a broader
attentional capture.
Can There Be Supertaskers?
Watson and Strayer (2010) present an interesting theoretical possibility that
there might be a small proportion of the population who are bestowed with
special capacities when it comes to completing complex multitasking
activities. For these individuals, they suggest that they do not experience the
detrimental effects associated with completing two tasks in a similar time
frame. They rely on existing evidence from the literature on those
individuals who display memory that falls outside the normal capacity
limits (Price and Davis, 2008). Based on their work, they found that 2.5 per
cent out of 200 participants exhibited the capacity to supertask, or more
specifically be able to complete a simulated driving task whilst using a
mobile phone without residual decrements in performance or attention.
However, they do suggest there may be associated trade-offs in terms of
other processing abilities, such as these individuals demonstrating a poorer
capacity to plan or remember things. They also suggest that the reason for
the limited proliferation of supertaskers throughout the human population is
to do with selection. At present, the skill of supertasking is something that
has become more specifically an advantage in the modern digital age, hence
it is only just being realised in the current generation. According to Watson
and Strayer (2010), such a skill will become more prevalent in future
generations as the need to multitask becomes more and more important and
evolutionarily beneficial.
When Multitasking Isn’t So Good
For many of us, the use of multitasking skills is usually confined to times
when the actual consequences may result in minor errors that would not
have a significant impact on us. However, there is one area of research
related to multitasking that does have significant implications for safety,
and that is the use of mobile phones whilst conducting another activity.
Much of these findings relate directly to the use of mobile phones whilst
driving, but other researchers have demonstrated that even whilst we are
walking, using a mobile phone can have a significant impact on our
capacity to pay attention. Studies have noted that talking on a mobile phone
can actually increase the risk of crashing by a factor of 4, which is why
legislation has moved to prevent people from doing it (Strayer et al., 2011).
As we explored earlier, the capacity to perform two tasks at the same time
will depend entirely on the extent to which a secondary activity shares
similar demands to that of the primary task. Previous research exploring the
use of hand-held devices focused directly on the physical interference that
was caused as a result of holding the device and driving at the same time
(Strayer et al., 2011; Young and Regan, 2007). As technology has changed
with the proliferation of hands-free devices and consequent changes in
legislation about the use of such devices whilst driving, the actual handling
of the mobile phone has decreased (though not been abolished), but
research has still noted a significant threat from cognitive distractions. A
number of researchers have noted that there is no significant difference in
terms of safety between using a hands-free mobile-phone system and a
handheld phone whilst driving, although most of these focus more on
talking rather than texting (Strayer et al., 2004, 2011; Young and Regan,
2007).
In a series of experiments, Strayer and colleagues (Strayer and Drews,
2007; Strayer and Johnston, 2001; Strayer et al., 2003) demonstrated that
using a mobile phone could actually produce aspects of inattentional
blindness. Just to recap, inattentional blindness is the notion that individuals
fail to see novel or distinctive objects or elements within their immediate
visual environment whilst engaged in a secondary, cognitively demanding
task (Jensen et al., 2011). Strayer and Drews (2007) asked their participants
to complete a simulated driving task whilst they were having a conversation
on a mobile phone. Interestingly they noted that even though participants
were looking directly at objects within the driving environment, they failed
to commit these elements to memory if they were talking on a mobile
phone. If the capacity to multitask successfully relies directly on the extent
to which both tasks are competing for the same resources, Strayer and
Drews (2007) suggested that there shouldn’t really be any direct impact of
talking on a mobile phone whilst driving. According to them, the
auditory/verbal/vocal elements of the mobile phone conversation shouldn’t
cross over with the visual/spatial/physical aspects of the driving task.
However, there is a degree of interference noted, which makes the models
related to multitasking based around different pots of resources appear a
little redundant.
So what about other activities in our daily life, such as walking and talking
on a mobile phone? Surely we don’t miss really novel things whilst we are
walking around if we are on our phones? Well, the short answer to this is
actually yes, we can miss out on things within our immediate environment
that we would assume should be perfectly visible. Hyman et al. (2010)
presented some novel findings that highlight this suggestion pretty well. In
their experiment, they compared participants according to their behaviour,
for example if they were walking and talking on a mobile phone, if they
were listening to music on an MP3 player, if they were walking in a pair or
if they were just walking along. Their initial findings showed that those
who were engaged in conversations on mobile phones took longer to walk
across a predetermined route than those who were listening to music and
those walking alone. They also noted that mobile phone users were more
likely to change direction as well as weave, which could potentially be
linked to aspects of decreased spatial attention. In the second part of the
study, the researchers introduced a novel stimulus: that of a unicycling
clown. Now for most of us, we would surely be able to recount the amount
of times we have walked around a city and encountered a unicycling clown,
wouldn’t we? Well, for those of us who like to talk and walk at the same
time, be prepared for a shock – you’d have probably missed the clown!
Those who were classified as using a mobile phone whilst walking were the
group least likely to report seeing the presence of the unicycling clown.
Only 25 per cent of those participants questioned in the study who were
walking and on their mobile phones noted the presence of the unicycling
clown. To put this into context, over 61 per cent of people using the MP3
whilst walking reported seeing the clown, along with 71 per cent of people
walking in pairs. What becomes apparent from this research is that even for
a very concrete and well-practised skill such as walking, the deficit in
attention when accompanied by the use of a mobile phone is tangible.
Incidences of injuries to pedestrians who are either walking whilst talking
on their mobile phone or texting are becoming more commonplace (Nasar
and Troyer, 2013; Nasar et al., 2008; Schwebel et al., 2012; Stavrinos et al.,
2009). For instance, the study by Stavrinos et al. (2009) explored the
simulated road crossing of children aged 10–11. In one condition, the
children crossed the road whilst being simultaneously engaged in a mobile
phone conversation with a person who was part of the research team. In the
other conditions the children crossed the road without any specific
distractions other than those that usually accompany a typical road-based
environment. The findings from their study demonstrated a significant
impairment in the children’s awareness to their surroundings whilst being
on a mobile phone. The children who were distracted paid less attention to
traffic, reducing the amount of time between them crossing the road and the
approach of another vehicle; they experienced more incidences of collisions
or very close calls with oncoming traffic and had a longer delay in starting
to cross the street. The research also examined whether the children’s
previous experience of using mobile phones served to mitigate this safety
risk. The results showed that there was no significant difference between
those who had used a mobile phone previously and those who had not
(Stavrinos et al., 2009).
Later work by Schwebel et al. (2012) expanded this work and explored the
differences in distraction for participants who were randomly assigned to
three different conditions. Participants aged 17–45 were asked to cross a
road in an interactive simulation that portrayed a typical pedestrian street
environment. The condition to which the participants were assigned
included conducting a mobile phone conversation whilst crossing, texting
and listening to music. Their performance was compared with a control
group who crossed the road undistracted. The results demonstrated that
those in the music and texting conditions were more likely to be ‘hit’ by a
virtual vehicle compared with the participants in the other groups. They
also noted that those in the texting group experienced more virtual hits than
those who were having a conversation on their mobile, a result that
contrasts with the work of Starvrinos et al. (2009) discussed above. It could
be that texting – which involves not only the motor co-ordination to type a
response, but also the facility to read and formulate a reply (which means
converting a verbal code into a symbolic one) – is more cognitively
demanding and therefore more distracting in comparison to simply having a
conversation on the phone. Schwebel et al. (2012) do, however, note that
this is the first piece of research to produce such a finding and express the
view that the aim should be to replicate these findings before we jump to
massive conclusions.
The Rise of the ‘Zombie Smartphone User’: A
World-Wide Epidemic
The issue of people using their smartphones has become such an problem
that a variety of initiatives have been implemented around the world in an
attempt to curb injuries and accidents related to their use. The problem has
reached such serious levels in places like Japan that they have even
invented their own term for it, that of ‘Aruki Sumaho’, or ‘smartphone
walking’ (www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23666695). In
2013 a news article by Renee Loth
(www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2013/07/12/distracted-texting-
rises-pedestrian-deaths/GGNWwpjuVDM6aEPf08PuoI/story.html) it was
reported that the town of Fort Lee in New Jersey had implemented a new
law that made walking whilst texting illegal, with pedestrians caught doing
so risking a fine.
Figure 6.2 An example of the signs designed by Swedish designers Jacob
Sempler and Emil Tiismann warning drivers that there might be distracted
pedestrians about
 Source: Photo: Jacob Sempler
Figure 6.3 A stark yet humorous warning to would-be Facebookers that
they may be putting their lives at risk whilst texting

Source: Robert Galbraith/REUTERS (taken from

http://www.wsj.com/articles/texting-while-walking-isnt-funny-
anymore-1455734501)
Figure 6.4 In certain parts of the world pathway segregation has been
implemented to stem the rise of collisions between distracted smartphone
users and other walkers and cyclists

Source: Reuters (www.wsj.com/articles/texting-while-walking-isnt-

funny-anymore-1455734501)
In the city of Stockholm designers have gone to the extreme measure of
designing road signs warning car drivers of the potential threat of zombie-
like pedestrians who might be walking around aimlessly trying to post
images of their breakfast on Twitter. These signs (see Figure 6.2), designed
by Swedish designers Jacob Sempler and Emil Tiismann
(http://jacobandemil.com/#/new-page-1/) highlight two things: people are
texting whilst walking, and they are doing it so much that motorists are
being made aware of the fact!
Other designers have taken a bit more of a humorous, tongue-in-cheek
approach to the issues of the zombie smartphone user, choosing to make
them think more about the actions they are performing. The image in Figure
6.3 is taken from the town of Hayward in California, and makes the point of
telling pedestrians that updating their social media probably isn’t worth
doing whilst crossing the road!
And finally we have the image in Figure 6.4 from the popular tourist
destination in Chongqing, China. The rise of the zombified smartphone user
was becoming so much of an issue that they actually created a specific
walkway for those who were using their smartphones whilst walking!
Summary
The notion of multitasking as a ubiquitous skill that everyone possesses and
everyone is really good at doesn’t really come across in the research
literature we have explored above. For the most part the take-home message
is that yes, we might think we are able to do two things at once and yes, we
might think we are really good at it … but in actual fact we aren’t.
Researchers have noted that the actual truth is that those who think they are
good at multitasking are potentially those who aren’t. Conversely, those
who have the capacity to be able to multitask may be those who choose not
to!
Is the use of digital technology impacting upon our capacity to multitask?
Well at the moment, the research just isn’t there to be able to draw this type
of conclusion. According to the work of Watson and Strayer (2010), there is
a possibility that our experiences with digital technology are driving a sort
of evolutionary selection towards the notion of ‘supertasker’ who will be
armed with the capacity to do several complex activities at the same time.
However, such a suggestion is a long way off in terms of the development
of humankind and its underlying cognitive processes. The reality of today is
that we attempt to multitask on a daily basis, and digital technology is
influencing the frequency of such activity. Both work and home
environments present a plethora of opportunities for us to engage (and
indulge) in multiple tasks at any one time. Sending a text whilst watching a
video online, tweeting whilst walking, trying to send an email whilst on the
phone to a colleague ‒ all of these things are multitasking, and all present
an opportunity for our cognitive resources to be stretched beyond their
limits. The consequences of multitasking can span from the humorous
(watch out for people walking into things whilst texting ‒ this is one of my
favoured pastimes!) or the downright dangerous. What underlies this issue
is the well-established fact that our cognitive systems are ill equipped to be
able to do multiple tasks in what appears to be the same time frame. Rather
than making the word multitasking a common term and a process we should
all be striving for, perhaps we need to take a step back, establish the reality
and start to refocus on the things and tasks that are most important.

OceanofPDF.com
7 Task Switching and Digital Technology
The Impact of Interruptions
Learning Aims and Objectives
To define the concept of interruption in the context of digital
technology;
to highlight the cost that interruptions can have upon the
individual’s capacity to focus and complete tasks in their daily
lives;
to review research looking at the impact that notifications from
both smartphones and email can have upon human cognition;
to explore the ways in which disruption from emails can be
mediated and managed;
to examine more recent research focusing on ‘self-initiated’
interruptions and examine how they fit into the digital
environment.
Overview
Question Box
Take a few moments and think about how often you get interrupted in
your daily life – then think about where these interruptions come
from and how they relate direct to digital technology. Were you
interrupted by a message notification, a friend request from
Facebook, an email or even a phone call?
Let us just take stock of our daily lives and think about the common events
and working practices that we engage in during such a typical day. You
could, for example, be sitting at your computer happily writing an essay,
reading a journal article, writing a best-selling book or report when you
suddenly get an email alert that links to an email from a colleague asking
you if you have a particular document you filed away several years ago. So
you go off in search of this document, perhaps looking through a list of
archived PDF files or scanning your bookshelves and shifting through
draws in order to find it. Whilst doing this task, you get a text message from
a friend asking you if you have the contact details of another friend as they
have managed to accidently flush their phone down the toilet (apparently a
common occurrence these days!) and they urgently need to speak to them.
Whilst sending these contact details through you get an update from your
eBay application telling you that joebloggslikescutekittens1948 has placed
a bid on your retro-style solar-powered torch ‒ and then you remember you
need to get back to the thing that you were originally doing about two hours
ago.
If any of this scenario appears to be familiar then that is probably because
many of us are now being interrupted frequently, and much of these
interruptions originate from the presence and use of digital technology.
According to some researchers individuals can be interrupted as often as
once every 12 minutes during their working day (Jin and Dabbish, 2009).
The constant presence of digital technology in both our work and social
lives means that interruptions can become an all too common occurrence.
For the most part, the cost of being interrupted would appear to be pretty
trivial, and perhaps would mean that what we are currently doing might get
delayed for a few minutes. Research exploring the impact of interruptions
on productivity serves to quantify the true cost of these incidences, and
demonstrate that they can have wider-reaching consequences.
In this chapter I want to begin to explore the current findings from research
that has focused on the impact of interruptions from a number of sources
closely aligned with digital technology. There is a degree of cross-over
between the aspects of multitasking introduced in the previous chapter and
being interrupted. In the context of our discussions, multitasking is viewed
for the most part as a process that the individual has some conscious
awareness of and control over, whereas interruptions are usually motivated
by sources external to us. These interruptions direct attention away from the
primary task in which we are engaged, whereas multitasking switches our
attention between two consecutive tasks. Interruptions will usually mean
that the primary task is suspended (perhaps indefinitely) whilst we go off
and deal with the interrupting alert and the task that has been associated
with it. This will in turn lead to a longer time away from the primary task,
and rather than two things being attempted in parallel (as is the case with
multitasking), we tend to press the ‘pause’ button on one task whilst doing
another.
In order to start this discussion off, it is important to present some clear
outlines on how researchers have defined the notion of an interruption and
how these compare to other occurrences such as distractions.
How are Interruptions Defined?
The process of defining an interruption against the backdrop of other effects
such as distractions can prove challenging. Van Solingen et al. (1998)
presented the notion that an interruption can be conceptualised as ‘any
distraction that makes an [individual] stop his planned activity to respond to
the interrupt’s initiator’. So in the context of this definition the concept of a
distraction has been presented as being part of the process of being
interrupted. There is also a requirement for the individual to respond to the
‘interrupt’s initiator’, meaning we have to reply or take an action towards
the thing or person that has deemed it necessary to disrupt our daily
working life, usually by emailing us images of cute cats. Coraggio (1990:
19) presented an earlier definition for an interruption as ‘an externally
generated, randomly occurring, discrete event that breaks continuity of
cognitive factors on a primary task’. If we start to dissect this definition a
little bit further there are a number of key principles that need some further
expansion. First, for Coraggio the interruption can only be externally
generated, a concept that up until recently many researchers would have
generally agreed upon. However, there is mounting evidence that
individuals can and do choose to perform what has been termed a ‘self-
interrupt’, meaning they may choose to actually interrupt themselves whilst
performing a task. Second, the interruption also has some form of
randomness attached to it, and it is this element of randomness that is seen
as being the key element in producing the greater levels of disruption
(Adamczyk and Bailey, 2004). If the individual can predict when an
interruption may come about, or if they occur at regular intervals, then the
individual can take action in order to mitigate their effects, through either
planning or dealing with all interruptions at one time.
The notion of ‘discrete events’ links directly to those attention-grabbing
events we discussed in the context of exogenous processes. A discrete
stimulus is usually an event that stands out as something that is novel or
different within the environment in which it occurs. In the context of
interruptions, this novel event will direct our attention away from the task
that we are currently doing towards the source of the interruption.
The last element of Coraggio’s definition is perhaps the most important
element for our present discussion: the fact that the presence of an
interruption can divert cognitive resources away from our current task. The
action of the interruption will mean that our finite cognitive resources are
redirected towards the task that is now related to the interruption. This will
in turn lead to the possibility of an increased amount of time to complete
the original task, as well as the chance that the original task may not be
returned to at all.
Further work has attempted to dissect how interruptions and distractions
differ, although they may appear to be one and the same thing at first
glance. Speier et al. (2003) provided some useful clarification regarding the
similarity and differences that exist between these two phenomena. Both
interruptions and distractions share a common characteristic in that they can
both occur whilst we are engaged in doing something else. However, they
do differ in terms of how they are detected by our primary senses. In the
context of distractions, these are detected by senses that sit outside those
currently being used for the primary task. This in turn means that we can
choose to ignore the disrupting stimulus (as it isn’t directly relevant to the
current task) or we can process the distraction at the same time as the
primary task. If we do the latter, we can usually get away with doing so
without incurring a great deal of impairment on the primary task as the two
tasks do not share a common set of resources. Cohen (1980) noted that
whilst distractions can have the capacity to divert our attention away from a
current activity, they often don’t require us to make a response. In contrast,
an interruption will usually occupy the same sensory channel as the primary
task, hence we find it a lot harder to ignore them (e.g. an email notification
whilst we are writing a paper on the computer). This ultimately means that
we are splitting cognitive resources between two tasks above what we have
currently available, usually meaning that the interruption will be processed
in favour of the primary task.
Work by Trafton et al. (2003) focused directly on mapping the critical
events attached to an interruption. They detail these four key events as
follows:
An interruption alert: This is the ‘thing’ or event that makes the
individual pay attention to the interruption itself. This could be a
sound, a message alert, and usually has some element of urgency
attached to it – this in turn will determine the speed and level of
response by the individual.
Starting the interrupting task: There is a point at which the individual
will switch from their current (primary) task to that of the interrupting
task. The process will involve a set of ‘switching costs’ which is the
 changeover in the mental processes associated with the primary task to
those needed for the secondary (interrupting) task.
Ending the interrupting task: This is the point at which the individual
reaches a satisfactory conclusion for the interrupting task and engages
in a process of extinguishing the associated memory traces for it.
Resumption of the primary task: This is the point at which we now
have to resume the task we left in order to deal with the interruption,
which also means we have to remember where we left it, what we
were doing, as well as the associated goals aligned with that task. This
process of task re-engagement will also add additional time to its final
completion.
There are two further concepts that are closely aligned with these stages
that appear frequently in the literature on interruptions. In the first instance
we have the ‘interruption lag’, which is conceived as the time between the
alert and the start of the secondary (interrupting) task. Then we have the
time between leaving the secondary task and the re-engagement of the
original task; this is the period termed as the ‘resumption lag’. All of this, as
discussed before, adds additional time to the task we were originally doing
(Trafton et al., 2003).
Figure 7.1 Timeline of an interruption (adapted from J. Gregory Trafton et
al., 2003)

How Does the Context of the Interruption Affect

Us?
Research from the area of human‒computer interaction has noted that a
variety of contextual elements related to the interruption that can influence
the level of disruption caused by them. It is useful to explore this literature
in order to provide a basis for our wider discussions throughout this chapter,
particularly when the digital environment can present such a wide variety of
backdrops for interruptions to take place.
Interruption relevance
A number of researchers have noted that an interruption which has direct
relevance to the task in hand (new information related to current task or
search parameters) is far less disruptive than an irrelevant one (Czerwinski
et al, 2000; Kalyanaraman, et al., 2005; Roda, 2011). Users are continually
searching for information that is directly relevant to the current task goals,
with more relevant information leading to a more positive view of that
particular website (Kalyanaraman and Sundar, 2006). In contrast, task-
irrelevant interruptions have been shown to create feelings of frustration
and irritation in users, which is proposed to stem from the perceived
intrusiveness of task-irrelevant interference (Li et al., 2002).
Assessing the relevance of any information contained in an interruption is
not necessarily an automated task that is governed by an unconscious
attentional process. Individuals must first highlight the interruption and
assess the relevance of the information contained within it to the current
task. This processes is based on semantic information (factual information)
that requires a lot more in terms of cognitive resources than a simple visual
match does. Therefore the mere process of highlighting whether or not the
interruption is relevant reduces the amount of cognitive resources we can
devote to the primary task (Roda, 2011).
Nature of task complexity
The notion that task complexity has an interaction with the presence of an
interruption has been documented in previous research. The concept of task
complexity has been operationalised for research purposes as a function of
the amount of specific information the individual has to deal with at any
one time. In this regard any task that requires the use of multiple steps or
requires a number of concurrent operations to be stored and later processed
is seen as being typical of complex tasks (Coraggio, 1990). As such, these
tasks require a great deal of cognitive resources to be available in order for
them to be completed successfully and accurately. As one would expect
from this regard, research has shown that interruptions are far more
damaging to performance on complex tasks as a result of competition
between the task and the interruption itself for access to limited resources.
Coraggio (1990) noted that interruptions in their broadest sense are far more
disruptive when the individual subjected to them is engaged in a more
complex and highly cognitively demanding task. Here Coraggio (1990)
introduced the notion of task granularity, a term that is used to describe the
overall structure of tasks; a highly granular task contains a variety of sub-
tasks entrenched within it, with each task needing to be completed before
the individual can move on to the next stage. A task of this nature could be
analogous to an individual who is searching for information requires
visiting multiple webpages, each aspect representing a ‘grain’ in the task
process (Smith, 2010). Coraggio (1990) noted that performance was
affected less by an interruption when it occurred during a stage in the task
which moved them naturally from one task to another, particularly when
they had just engaged in that task. Bailey and Iqbal (2008) further noted
that the disruptions via interruptions serves to increase the length of time
spent on tasks. This suggests a pattern of information processing where the
indTiming of Interruptionividual who is close to completion of a task is
holding a lot of information. It is at this point that multiple task ‘grains’
could be active, hence the individual becomes more susceptible to any form
of interruption. This in turn would lead to a greater decrement in
performance as more resources are diverted away to deal with the nature of
the interruption.
Content of the Notification
Designers of information systems are constantly exploring the limits to the
amount of information that can be contained in a notification. The
consideration for such mechanisms is to ensure that the level of disruption
users experience is kept to a minimum whilst ensuring the individual is
orientated to relevant information (Roda, 2011). Roda (2011) goes on to
highlight three key mechanisms for notification according to their content
type, each one having specific ramifications for the level of disruption that
the user experiences:
1. Pure notification: A simple icon or pointer that serves to highlight new
information or the presence of a new task that needs to be completed.
Common examples of pure notification mechanisms include animated
or ‘jumping’ icons that alert the user to new system information or an
appearing and fading modal window that tells users about newly
available information (Roda, 2011). These types of notifications have
 low-level disruptive capacity on the individual and require the user to
take action in order to deal with the interruption.
2. Awareness mechanisms: These types of notifications provide the user
with the actual information without referring them to it in a secondary
window or system. This could include the appearance of a tutorial-
based dialog box indicating relevant options and help information to
the user. According to Roda (2011), these types of notification have a
medium level of disruption.
3. Complete switch of context: This is where a new window/new
application is opened. In this instance the individual has no prior
warning that a new task has to be completed. In this instance there is
no annunciation signal and the end user is taken straight to the new
task (McFarlane and Latorella, 2002). These types of notifications are
the most cognitive demanding and jarring as they present a completely
new task with little or no warning to the end user.
Timing of Interruption
Research into this area has suggested that the point at which an interruption
occurs in the context of the task has a mediating effect on the level of
disruption that occurs. A number of studies have found that an interruption
occurring in the middle of a task is more likely to disrupt performance in
contrast to one that appears towards the beginning of the task (Coraggio,
1990; Speier et al., 2003). Such a pattern is linked to aspects of cognitive
load and the notion of granularity introduced earlier (Coraggio, 1990).
Interruptions that occur early on in a task are easily mediated through the
use of resources that have not already been deployed in the pursuance of
completing the primary task. However, as the task progresses, more and
more task-relevant resources are being taken up, so anything that diverts
these away from the completion of that task will result in disruption.
Czerwinski et al. (2000) asked participants to complete a web-based
research task and found that this was less easily disrupted when the
interruption occurred at the beginning of the task. Interruptions that
occurred early on in the planning stages where a search strategy was being
formed failed to significantly increase response times. In contrast, an
interruption that occurred during more cognitively demanding aspects of the
task, either during execution (actually completing the search) or evaluation
(assessing the results of the search and highlighting the most relevant
aspects) was far more disruptive (Czerwinski et al., 2000).
Why Are Interruptions So Important for Us to
Understand?
I am sure many of you are sitting there thinking that being interrupted
cannot be that bad, it is just part and parcel of our everyday lives ‒ right?
Well let’s take this assumption to task and explore it in the context of the
rise of digital technology. The impact of interruptions from external
sources, in particular those being caused by computer-based technology, has
been the focus of much research in the area of human‒computer interaction
(Adamczyk and Bailey, 2004; Cutrell et al., 2001; Czerwinski et al., 2004;
McFarlane, 2002; Sykes, 2011). The take-home message from much of this
research is pretty consistent in suggesting that interruptions to any ongoing
task present a wide array of negative consequences (Eyrolle and Cellier,
2000). These negative effects can include an increase in the time it takes to
complete the primary task (which has been interrupted), an increase in the
individual’s general feelings of annoyance and higher levels of anxiety, as
well as an increased perception of task difficulty (Bailey et al., 2000). Other
researchers have noted that individuals who have been frequently
interrupted report feelings of distraction, stress and anxiety, all as a result of
the impact digital distractions have within the workplace (Kushlev and
Dunn, 2015; Mark et al., 2012). Workers who received random notifications
whilst performing common workplace tasks expressed feelings of
annoyance at constantly being interrupted and were more likely to
demonstrate clear feelings of frustration. A consequence of these
interruptions is that workers may also feel more pressure to complete tasks
in a given time frame and therefore report a need to exert more effort on the
primary task on which they were currently focused. These findings were
presented in stark contrast to another group of workers who had no such
interruptions and in turn did not experience any of the negative
consequences (Adamczyk and Bailey, 2004). Additional work from Gupta
et al. (2013; see also Gupta and Sharda, 2008) noted that workers can lose
up to 5 per cent of their overall working day as a result of interruptions
(which roughly equates to about 25 minutes in an 8-hour working day, or
11.75 days over the average working year!).
Interruptions and Smartphones: Everything
Happens within the ‘Push’ Economy
Researchers have more recently started to explore the impact those shiny
little devices we choose to covet so much can have on the way in which
interruptions enter our daily lives. In contrast to interruptions and
notifications that are presented through the medium of the desktop PC,
those initiated by the smartphone are something a little bit different – but
why? Well, it all comes down to the way in which messages are ‘pushed’
through to the individual (Basoglu et al., 2009). Researchers such as
Bawden and Robinson (2008) and Schultze and Varden-Bosch (1998) noted
the capacity for digital technology to ‘push’ notifications to the end user.
These push notifications can be highly intrusive and appear totally at
random throughout our daily working (and sleeping) lives. Many of these
notifications also have another element attached to them, that of a sense of
urgency in which to perform the action being requested by the notification.
Many will ask for immediate response or action from the end user and are
often presented irrespective of their relevance to the current task being
completed (Basoglu et al., 2009).
The research by Basoglu et al. (2009) noted a number of key detrimental
effects that interruption mediated by smartphones could have on the
individual, including:
a level of mental effort and attention that is hard for the individual to
sustain;
mental resources becoming strictly limited in order to deal with the
interrupting task, meaning that if any additional processing
requirements come along, they will be postponed or performed poorly;
broken task flow: the concept of ‘flow’ is an important concept in the
performance of any task and can be equated to the notion of being ‘in
the zone’ ‒ any interruption can severely impact on this aspect of flow,
hence reducing the individual’s performance on such a task;
increased time spent engaged on the task: this goes without saying, as
when we get interrupted we have to not only complete the interrupting
task but also continue with the task we were originally doing. (Basoglu
et al., 2009)
According to Sahami Shirazi et al. (2014), one of the key issues with
smartphones is that they present a concentration of notifications that are
presented through one unified system, rather than being delivered
individually by different programs on a computer desktop. They can also
come from a wider and broader set of programs, not just limited to elements
such as email or instant messaging. For instance, notifications can come
from applications linked directly to communication (such as SMS, email
and Whatsapp), wider applications linked to e-commerce (such as eBay)
and gaming notifications (clash of clans, etc.), and then there are the more
generic system notifications (low battery, memory full, messages about
software updates). Sahami Shirazi et al. (2014) noted that smartphone users
will click on notifications presented on their devices in less than 30 seconds
from the point at which they receive them, irrespective of where the
notification has come from (e.g. if it is a message or a more generic system
notification). The constant presence of the smartphone in nearly every
aspect of our daily lives makes such notifications even more invasive,
particularly when such devices are nearly always with the owner (Wiese et
al., 2013). For example, 79 per cent of those questioned about their daily
use of their smartphone said they had their phones on or near them for all
but two hours of their working day (Levitas, 2013). In additional work
produced by the PEW Internet Research Centre (Smith et al., 2015) it was
noted that 57 per cent of respondents reported being distracted by their
smartphone in the week preceding being questioned. However, as an
additional point it should be noted that 79 per cent of those who responded
also noted that their smartphone device had helped them be ‘productive’,
presenting something of a paradox.
Research into interruptions mitigated by smartphone technologies is
currently developing at pace, but at the moment there are a limited number
of studies exploring such. Amongst some of those studies that have already
been conducted, Leiva et al. (2012) explored the impact of interruptions on
the actual use of mobile phone applications themselves. They noted that
being interrupted whilst using a smartphone application is actually a rare
occurrence accounting for approximately 10 per cent of their daily use.
However, when individuals are interrupted whilst they are using
smartphone applications there is some evidence to suggest this can be
disruptive at the very least. The impact is usually manifest in terms of a
time delay in the process of completing the primary task. The interruptions
manifest whilst using a smartphone can either be from another smartphone
application that could be presenting an alert or message or could be the
occurrence of a phone call. The research noted that participants were
actually very reluctant to switch between applications in order to transfer
into the interrupting application, which may be surprising given the
widespread assumption that individuals frequently switch between apps.
The researchers suggested that this reluctance may be in part due to a fear
of losing focus on their current task and the lack of any suitable
mechanisms that would guide them back to the point at which they left their
previous task (Leiva et al., 2012). Overall the researchers concluded that the
cost of being interrupted whilst using a smartphone application can be
particularly costly in terms of time, with a four-fold increase in the amount
of time it takes to complete a primary task in comparison with a task that is
not interrupted.
In other work, researchers have noted the potential for smartphone
notifications to be creating symptoms akin to those seen in individuals who
have been clinically diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD). ADHD has been characterised by a set of symptoms that include
aspects of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity (Castellanos et al.,
2006). To date, the root cause of ADHD has been linked to be both
structural and neurochemical differences in the brain in those individuals
suffering from the disorder in comparison with those not diagnosed
(Castellanos et al., 2006). Although researchers such as Kushlev et al.
(2016) are keen to stress that digital technology is not creating ADHD, they
do suggest that random interruptions mitigated by smartphone devices
could be producing ADHD-like symptoms in a clinically normal
population. In their research, they noted that interruptions from smartphone
devices increased two key underlying aspects of the disorder, namely
inattention and hyperactivity, in a population that had been screened for
ADHD. What also came out of the research by Kushlev et al. (2016) is that
most individuals actively increased their susceptibility to these types of
interruptions by keeping notifications on and by leaving their smartphones
within easy reach. In terms of managing these issues, the authors of this
study suggested that actively suppressing notifications could actually create
more stress and anxiety. This could in turn increase the frequency of self-
motivated interruptions as individuals search out their smartphones to check
for messages and other alerts (Kushlev et al., 2016). This would follow a
similar process to that of fear of missing out (FoMO) to be discussed in
Chapter 11.
Is There a Difference in What Types of
Notifications We Pay More Attention To?
A variety of research has explored how quickly we respond to mobile
notifications as well as how a perceived level of importance can manipulate
our speed for responding. Sahami Shirazi et al. (2014) noted that
participants had a shorter response time to notifications they perceived as
being personally important. It should be noted that even though this was a
significant result, the authors of the study do state that the actual strength of
the correlation was weak, indicating that the results are perhaps as not as
robust as first assumed. Other results suggest that the user is less likely to
block notifications that originate from communication-based applications,
these being viewed as being of critical importance. This practice was also
found for those applications who had a significant ‘social’ element attached
to their usability, including elements such as calendars and social
networking. In contrast, notifications that were generated directly by the
system were seen as being of least importance and were the ones most
likely to be switched off. End users in this study also noted that where there
was a high volume of notifications, their perceived usefulness decreased
and the level of annoyance increased as a result.
Other researchers have noted the tendency for individuals to choose what
type of notifications we actually receive, which in turn influences how we
pay attention to them. Chang and Tang (2015) noted that there are three key
purposes associated with changing notification type from ringing to silent
and vice versa:
1. to actively avoid unnecessary interruptions (we just want to be alone);
2. to avoid disrupting the environment the individual is in (we don’t want
other people to be disturbed by the message notification);
3. to still be able to notice important notifications – this is to make
important and personally relevant notifications more obvious,
especially when the individual might be expecting an important
message or call.
The researchers noted that there was no significant difference according to
their responsiveness to notifications. Even though the individual may be
expecting a message and may attend to the notification (so they know it is
there), it does not necessarily mean that they will respond to it immediately.
This may appear at odds with other research presented by Sahami Shirazi et
al. (2014).
What about These ‘Self-Interruptions’?
As was mentioned in a previous section, the lure of digital technology may
also be having a wider impact on the potential for individuals to
automatically ‘self-interrupt’ their current activities. A great deal of work
has focused on the impact interruptions via external factors can have, but
according to other researchers the work examining potential internal factors
is somewhat limited (Jin and Dabbish, 2009). A variety of previous research
coming from a human–computer interaction background have noted that
almost 50 per cent of task-switching activities were actually motivated by
the individual themselves rather than being caused by an external source
(Czerwinski et al., 2004; González and Mark, 2004; Jin and Dabbish, 2009;
Mark et al., 2005). Other researchers have noted that individuals experience
approximately 22 disruptions from external sources during the average
working day; in contrast, individuals are seen to self-interrupt their workday
around about 65 times per day (Wajcman and Rose, 2011). As you can see,
the notion that digital technology is always the instigator behind
interruptions to our daily working life may be a little bit erroneous.
Of particular interest, particularly from a productivity perspective, is the
finding that those tasks that are self-interrupted are a lot less likely to be
resumed in comparison with those that were initiated by an external force
(Mark et al., 2005). This tendency for individuals to make a sudden
decision to halt the primary task in favour of a secondary one has been
more technically termed ‘discretionary task interleaving’ (Payne et al.,
2007). These authors viewed this process as being a self-initiated switch
away from a current primary task in favour of another prior to its
completion. Although not firmly stated in the research literature in this area,
it could be the case that digital technology is presenting the individual with
a wider set of opportunities to engage in self-initiated shifts in favour of
other, more attractive activities outside of their primary task focus.
Jin and Dabbish (2009) presented an interesting piece of research that
aimed to detail the key reasons as to why people engage in self-interrupts
whilst using computer technology, alongside the potential positives and
negatives for them. These seven typologies for self-interruptions are
presented in Table 7.1.
This research by Jin and Dabbish further noted that the use of self-
interruptions such as inquiries, breaks and adjustments could facilitate
performance on the primary task. These types of self-interruptions actually
help the individual find valuable additional information, or change
environmental work factors to enhance productivity.
In the context of the cyber-related activities, Dabbish et al. (2011) explored
self-interruptions in the context of high-tech organisations. They examined
over 900 hours of task-switching activities from 36 individuals, noting that
in the office-based environment there was a 64 per cent increase in the level
of self-interruptions. Individuals were more likely to return to a central
sphere of activity, or something that they had sole responsibility for, by
implementing a self-interruption. They were also highly likely to use self-
interruptions to return to a solitary mode of working, indicating they use
these mechanisms to allow them to focus directly on their own work. A
further interesting point was that when an individual experiences an
external interruption in the preceding hours they significantly increase their
chances of initiating a self-interruption in the subsequent hour. Rosen et al.
(2011, 2013) also noted findings related to task switching and the impact on
education, and these will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8.
 Source: Jin and Dabbish (2009: 1083)
Interruptions from Email Use and Instant
Messaging
Many researchers have noted the pervasiveness of email in our daily lives,
not only from the perspective of work but also in our personal lives. Emails
can distract the individual from the current task that they are engaged in
with an additional requirement to process information that may not be
related directly to the current task (Zelikovich, 2011). In a report by Ofcom
2016) it was noted that sending emails was the most common activity for
adult Internet users to engage in, with 75 per cent of those questioned
having done this in the preceding week. In early work by Jackson et al.
(2001, 2002) they noted that it took an individual an average of 1 minute
and 44 seconds to react to an email notification, with this being indicated by
someone actually opening up the email. They further noted that 70 per cent
of emails are reacted to within six seconds of them arriving; 85 per cent of
emails are reacted to within two minutes of arriving. So it would appear that
for the majority of the time, most individuals are reacting to email
notifications almost instantaneously, irrespective of the task that they are
currently engaged in. The research also noted that for the majority of
individuals set their email clients to check for new emails within a five-
minute cycle rather than individuals setting themselves a set time to check
and deal with them in one period. Czerwinski et al. (2004) presented a
surprising finding that only 3 per cent of those interruptions reported were
due to an email message alert or reminder, with a staggering 40 per cent of
interruptions being due to self-interruptions where individuals actually
chose to cease their primary task in favour of checking their emails. In
terms of the actual cost associated with email interruptions it was noted that
it took an average of 64 seconds for the individual to re-engage in their
original work task at the same speed prior to the interruption taking place
(Jackson et al., 2002).
In more recent work (Marulanda-Carter and Jackson, 2012) the impact of
email interruptions were explored within a work-based environment. As a
secondary objective, they also explore the suggestion made by previous
research that individuals may present a tendency to be addicted to email.
For example, widely reported research from a study conducted by AOL
(Gifford, 2008) noted that 17 per cent of respondents could not go one day
without access to their email, and 23 per cent checked their emails first
thing in the morning after waking. Hair et al. (2007) also noted that
individuals would voluntarily and regularly change their current activity to
check for new emails, as well as continue with this behaviour throughout
the rest of the day. Marulanda-Carter and Jackson (2012) make the critical
point that email presents perhaps one of the best reinforcement schedules
for rewarding behaviours that are of variable interval level. For this
schedule of reinforcement, the period of reward varies and isn’t always
guaranteed; sometimes we might get an email we really, really wanted
(perhaps a message from a loved one or a payment refund), but this might
be interjected by other messages that we really didn’t want (e.g. a spam PPI
message that has spelt your name wrong). Previous work has noted that 56
per cent of employees spent in excess of two hours in their email inbox
(although it does not directly state what they were doing in there!)
(Marulanda-Carter and Jackson, 2012)
The results from Marulanda-Carter and Jackson’s work showed that the
time cost for handling an interruption from an email was 116.5 seconds,
noted to be in excess of the 90 seconds that was previously suggested by
Jackson et al. (2002). In addition, the researchers noted that 15 per cent of
those questioned were classified as being addicted to email as demonstrated
through a number of behavioural markers. These markers included elements
such as checking emails on an hourly basis and opening up email clients
before doing anything else, essentially showing a preoccupation with
checking emails above all other work-related activities.
The impact of interruptions presented by instant messaging (IM) systems
was the focus of further work by Gupta et al. (2013). IM systems are widely
used, and perhaps more commonly so in the US with 90 per cent of
organisations based in the northern US using some form of IM (Gupta et al.,
2013). The focus of the study was to examine how social dynamics within
the organisation served to influence the level of disruption experienced by
the employee when they were interrupted by an IM. The researchers
suggested that the level of disruption and the speed at which the individual
responds to the IM would be directly related to the position of the sender
within the hierarchy of the organisation; the higher up the sender was in the
organisation, the quicker the response.
The results from the study by Gupta et al. (2013) demonstrated that
interruptions from IM produced a clear reduction in the overall quality of
work being produced as well as increasing the perceived overall workload
the individual was experiencing. They also noted that the position of the
sender in relation to the receiver within the social network of the
organisation also had a dramatic impact on the time it took to complete the
primary task. When the message sender was from within the individual’s
peer group, the interruption experienced as a result of receiving the IM
significantly increased the time taken to complete the primary task; in
contrast, the total time to complete the primary task was significantly
reduced when the message sender was seen as being more senior in the
organisation. Gupta et al. (2013) suggested that there is an underlying
heuristic element to this process that is activated when the individual sender
of the IM is seen as being more senior, thus giving priority to completing
the primary task whilst also being able to deal with the interruption. In the
case of the IM coming from a peer, such a strategy appears not to be
activated, which explains why it takes the individual longer to complete the
primary task in the presence of the interruption. It should also be noted that
the implementation of the heuristic strategy might also come at a cost, and
the reduction in completion time for the primary task might also lead to
errors creeping into the task as well.
How Can We Stop Ourselves Being Interrupted?
Researchers have suggested a variety of strategies in order to help
individuals deal with interruptions from digital technology and email
notifications. Marulanda-Carter et al. (2012) suggested the creation of
‘email schedules’ in order to mitigate the impact of being constantly
interrupted by emails throughout the working day. One of these
mechanisms would be to create a realistic routine for checking emails
throughout the day, with the authors suggesting perhaps three times per day.
They also make the suggestion that this should occur at specific times in the
day (perhaps at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and just before the end of the working day).
Gupta et al. (2011) also made the suggestion that the best way to deal with
emails is to respond either two or four times daily rather than in 45-minute
cycles or on a continuous basis. Marulanda-Carter et al. (2012) also suggest
that individuals seek to limit the amount of time they spend dealing with
emails in any one session, with an upper limit of 30 minutes being
proposed. Finally, the researchers noted the disruptive influence of emails
could be further mitigated by creating a series of specific tasks that have to
be completed during each of the scheduled time periods – so, for example,
in the first session emails are simply read, with no further actions being
taken. In the second session emails may be chosen and replied to, with the
final session being reserved for the sending and filing of emails. The
suggestions do present a logical approach to dealing with the interruptions
presented by emails, but they do, however, rely upon the individual to self-
impose these scheduling techniques. In addition, if the individual is
applying such mechanisms by themselves, one person doing so in isolation
could perhaps cause wider issues when others in the organisation are
pushed to reply to emails in a time-critical manner. Research by Soucek and
Moser (2010) noted a significant decrease in measures of email-related
strain and work impairment after employees had engaged in a period of
training. Such a strategy could be an effective approach for helping office
workers deal with the daily information overload presented by endless
email traffic. Consequently there is the potential for effective training
sessions to provide useful strategies for reducing the overall cognitive load
on the individual worker (Soucek and Moser, 2010).
Summary
As we have seen, the modern digital environment offers a plethora of
mechanisms through which the individual can be interrupted. On the one
hand, we have the ever-present smartphone devices that inhabit nearly
every part of our waking day (and for some are present during their sleep as
well). These devices are omnipresent, and the notifications that they spew
forth appear at random, without warning, and place a great deal of pressure
on us to respond. This process diverts our attention away from the current
task we are focusing on, but also means that we may find it a lot harder to
resume that primary task once we have dealt with the interruption.
Importantly it is becoming more apparent that it may not just be digital
devices that are to blame for interruptions in our daily lives, and there is a
bigger culprit at large ‒ ourselves. The work presented on self-initiated
interruptions, particularly for those engaged in computer-related activities,
shows that there are a number of reasons why individuals will choose to
self-interrupt. Some of these mechanisms can be beneficial to the
individual, and may provide them with much needed information that will
help them complete their primary task. However, other forms of self-
interruption can lead the individual to become inherently side-tracked,
perhaps engaged in a cascade of activities that lead them further and further
away from their current primary task.
Email is viewed as a ubiquitous tool, not only in our work lives but also for
personal communications. The potential for us to react and respond to
emails almost instantaneously means that it offers another mechanism for us
to be interrupted. Researchers have shown that being interrupted via email
notifications cannot only impact on the time it takes to complete the
primary task, but also influence our chances of actually re-engaging with
that primary task in the first instance. A variety of methods have been
suggested in order to mitigate the impact that interruptions via email have
on our productivity, as well as aiming to reduce the potential for stress and
information overload from such systems.

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8 Technology and Education
Key Learning Objectives
To explore the impact digital technology can have upon learning
and academic outcomes;
to examine how the use of social networking sites can both
enhance and also detract from the learning experience;
to focus on the invasion of digital technology into learning
contexts and how this may be impacting on learning;
to discuss the possible implications of this research and what it
could mean for teaching in the context of the digital age.
Overview
The literature surrounding the impact of newer forms of digital technology
on aspects of education presents something of a mixed bag when it comes
to making firm conclusions. Much of this research has been mapped onto
the belief that those in the digital native generation are adopting different
learning styles based on their use of technology. Similarly, there is a
growing moral panic on the behalf of educators and parents alike that the
use of digital technology is having a detrimental impact on the capacity for
students to focus on their studies. This process is said to be having a knock-
on effect on their capacity to retain key pieces of information, hence
impacting on academic grades.
On the one hand we have researchers who are extolling the virtues of
integrating technology within the learning environment so that students can
be fully immersed in education. On the other, there is contradictory
evidence that technology use in the classroom and lecture-based
environments can have a detrimental impact on learning and education
attainment. It should be noted that much of this research focuses on
individuals aged 12–18 (Alloway et al., 2013). As highlighted previously,
this developmental period is linked directly to a variety of structural
changes in the brain that impact on aspects such as executive control and
motivation (Choudhury and McKinney, 2013). Therefore making any clear
links between the use of technology and its impact on learning during this
period should be tentative at the most. The results may not be directly
associated with the impact of technology and could most likely be
confounded by these significant developmental changes.
Research has noted that student engagement can easily be impacted on by
the use of social networking technology. For instance, Bliuc (2010) noted
that the use of discussion boards was heavily associated with a process of
answer finding, which in turn encouraged a surface reproduction of existing
material rather than actually completing the task that has been set. This had
the knock-on effect of limiting the level of deeper learning that also resulted
in a lower final course grade. Distance learning conducted through the use
of virtual learning environments has also come under scrutiny. Sapp and
Simon (2005) noted that students enrolled in distance learning often failed
to complete the course, and that where they did, they received lower overall
grades in comparison to those who received the same course through face-
to-face teaching. Furthermore, Weatherly et al. (2003) noted that students
who were supplied with lecture slides via a learning management system
(e.g. Blackboard) had lower exam results in comparison with a control
group who took normal paper and pencil notes. The authors suggested that
this could be also linked to a lack of engagement related to attendance
issues, a point that could also be limitations in the transferral of tacit and
implicit knowledge (e.g. Özdemir, 2008). Further research by Grabe and
Christopherson (2005) explored the pattern of access for online notes and
examination performance, presenting a contrast to the findings from
Weatherly et al. (2003). They showed that students who frequently accessed
notes online performed better in examinations, and students who attended
classes were the most consistent in their use of such a facility. This suggests
that those students who are achieving higher grades are using online notes
as a supplementary resource rather than as a replacement for lecture
attendance.
For the most part much of the research that has been conducted into the
impact of newer forms of technology on learning can be grouped under two
very broad headings. The first of these looks at the impact social
networking use has upon academic performance, whilst the second directly
explores the impact of technology such as smartphones, mobile phones and
laptops on the retention of information. In this chapter we will be exploring
the research that has been presented under both these categories to see the
potential benefits and pitfalls of each.
The Changing Face of Education in the Light of
New Technology
Kolikant (2010) presented a series of ideas based on original work by
Wertsch (1998) that serves to provide a background for exploring how
individuals from different generations engage with new tools. Such work is
easily extended to the use of digital media and technology, and serves to
highlight the current issues we are facing when introducing such into the
realm of education. According to Wertsch, when we encounter a new tool
there is a phase of exploration in which the individual tests its capacity, for
example what it is and what it can be used for. As time progresses, both our
understanding and use of this tool develops. In the context of the Internet
and digital media the way in which we use these is constantly evolving.
This process of evolution is driven by our understanding of how we can use
technology, but also by how such practices are accepted as valid uses for
such tools. For instance, Kolikant suggested that the Internet does not just
present us with a mechanism for collecting data and information but can
also fundamentally changes the actions of the user. More specifically, the
Internet does not change just the way in which we learn, but also the values
we attach to that learning process in terms of what is ‘good’ and what is
‘bad’ (Turkle and Papert, 1992). This process is best demonstrated through
what Turkle and Papert (1992) termed ‘bricolage’, which has become a
legitimate way of learning in the context of the net generation. Bricolage is
a French word that essentially means ‘do-it-yourself’, and in the context of
work is seen as taking things that are currently available to create a separate
project or piece of work. Rather than learning being seen as a logical and
systematic exploration of key facts and concepts, in turn leading to greater
understanding and a wider synthesis of newer ideas, bricolage is seen more
as ‘tinkering’. This tinkering process involves a trial and error approach to
problem solving, essentially akin to finding elements that will work
(Kolikant, 2010) What does this mean for the process of learning? Well,
essentially it means that individuals are less likely to establish the
fundamental elements of knowledge and remember facts and information.
Instead, people are remembering the tools, resources or mechanisms they
are using to piece together answers to questions or complete tasks – so
rather than recalling information, individuals may recall the website to go to
in order to get this information (Sparrow et al., 2011).
Social Networking and Educational Attainment
In initial research presented by Kirschner and Karpinski (2010) the results
they reported showed that non-Facebook users achieved a higher overall
grade than those who did use Facebook. These results were interpreted as
highlighting a capacity for those using Facebook to engage in higher levels
of procrastination, in turn suffering from poorer time-management skills.
The use of Facebook is essentially seen to facilitate the capacity for
individuals to engage in an activity that isn’t their primary task, hence
leading to less time being devoted to academic study. There is a chance that
this process could be intrinsically linked to individual differences in
attentional control (Kirschner and Karpinski, 2010), a notion that further
highlights the difficulty for researchers attempting to pinpoint the influence
technology is having on learning. Junco and Cotten (2011, 2012) also noted
that those students who spent more time using information or
communication technologies such as Facebook or instant messaging whilst
doing their homework reported lower overall Grade Point Average (or
GPA).
In later research Alloway et al. (2013) an opposing view was presented, that
the use of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook could actually be
linked to improvements in key cognitive skills. They found that participants
who reported using Facebook on a regular basis actually scored better on
testing of working memory, verbal ability and spelling. The research
however failed to note any significant difference for skills related to
mathematics. The improvement in tests of verbal ability were best predicted
by the frequency with which the individual was seen to be checking their
friends’ status updates. So why should this be the case? Well the researchers
suggested that exploring and interacting with Facebook shares a variety of
similarities to tasks associated with those used in a working memory
experiments. For example, the individual is presented with a wide variety of
both visual and verbal information that they are required to decode and
manipulate. This manipulation is critical if the individual is to make sense
of that environment and the information that is presented within it, and
requires the integration of data from across both modalities. The individual
may also be required to present an output (which may be a ‘like’ or a
response to a post) or a need to store information for later use (Alloway et
al., 2013). Such a process is representative of all the elements subsumed by
working memory, where there is a need for integration of verbal and visual
information using aspects of executive control. In terms of the improvement
in verbal skills for high users of Facebook, Alloway et al. (2013) suggested
the existence of a potential ‘training effect’. This would come about as
those individuals engaged in more frequent communication are developing
and honing these core skills. Second, there could also be an element of self-
efficacy and social comparison at work in the context of this study; as
individuals are communicating with peers and those who they respect (so
therefore they want to look good in front of them), they may wish to display
a degree of competency at least on a level with their peers.
The use of SNS has also been linked to the concept of student engagement,
this being defined as ‘the quality and quantity of the physical and
psychological energy that students invest’, predominantly in their academic
experience (Astin, 1984: 528). Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) noted that
increased levels of student engagement lead to a residual increase in
academic performance. Those students who were more engaged in their
educational activities had better grades and also displayed a higher degree
of persistence towards the point of graduation. Additional research in this
area noted a positive correlation for SNS use and the level of engagement
presented by students in their academic work. Studies have also noted that
those students who engaged in more-frequent SNS use were using them to
facilitate their offline relationships rather than as a substitute for offline
interactions (Jacobsen and Forste, 2011; Junco, 2011). Higher-frequency
SNS users also engaged in daily interactions with individuals they knew
offline, thereby creating stronger interpersonal connections (Junco and
Cotten, 2011; Junco et al., 2011). This work is echoed by research
conducted by Junco (2012a), who also noted that time spent on Facebook
was positively correlated to students’ engagement in extra-curricular
activities outside of those being purely academic in nature. Junco (2012b),
however, noted in addition that the time spent on Facebook served as a
negative predictor for overall grades. This was in contrast to time spent
checking the status updates of friends and sharing links, which was shown
to be a positive predictor for overall final grades. The assertions made here
is that more time spent on Facebook leads to less time for the student to
engage in academic study. Frequency of checking and posting may be a
brief, time-limited activity, which in turn could be linked to the earlier
findings by Alloway et al. (2013) on practice effects.
Digital Technology, Multitasking and the Teaching
Environment: A Force for Good?
Research into effective learning has previously noted that the efficient
deployment of attention plays a critical role in the retention of material for
later recall (Hidi, 1995; Posner and Rothbart, 2005; Reynolds, 1992; Wilson
and Korn, 2007). When a situation arises where attention is diverted away
from the main focus of the learning, then such information is at risk of not
being remembered. The rise of the use of digital technology within
educational contexts has been linked to aspects of inattention and
distraction in students. Kessler (2002) noted that 73 per cent of college
students (from a sample of 500) stated that they were unable to study
without some form of technology, with a further 38 per cent also saying that
they were unable to go at least ten minutes without checking their
smartphone or tablet device for updates and messages.
As we have already noted in Chapter 6, the research on multitasking shows
that people are inherently poor at attending to multiple inputs of
information or doing two tasks at once (Pashler and Johnston, 1998). It is
generally accepted that some form of performance deficit will occur when
we are required to carry out two tasks at the same time (Pashler and
Johnston, 1998; Pashler et al., 2001). In terms of the impact multitasking
can have upon individuals in an educational context, the findings don’t
present a good picture for those who like to sit in lectures thinking about
their dinner. For instance, Junco and Cotten (2011) noted that those students
who used instant messaging whilst studying reported a detrimental impact
on their capacity to focus on their work. Furthermore, Wood et al. (2012)
explored the use of Facebook during lectures and noted that those students
who used it during lectures had lower test scores on lecture material than
those students who did not. Ravizza et al. (2014) also noted a significant
impact on academic performance when the Internet was used in academic
settings for non-academic purposes. Their research showed that those
individuals who reported frequently using the Internet for activities such as
being on Facebook whilst being engaged in classes reported lower exam
scores.
Risko et al. (2013) presented a number of theoretical possibilities as to why
multitasking has such a detrimental impact on learning:
The resource competition account: Essentially we are gifted with a set
of cognitive resources (think of these in terms of tools) that cannot be
shared across different tasks. Therefore tasks must be completed
sequentially rather than simultaneously. Imagine that you are trying to
build a piece of flat-pack furniture and need to use a screwdriver, but
your housemate/friend/partner already has the screwdriver (and you
only have one) – in order to complete the current task you have to wait
for the screwdriver to become ‘free’. This is the same process with
resource competition, but with cognitive skills rather than
screwdrivers. This means that if we are engaged in non-lecture-based
activities whilst also trying to attend to the lecture, competition for the
same resource will arise and there will be a residual cost.
The interleaving approach: This is the capacity that is afforded to
individuals that allows them to choose which tasks are completed
based upon the perception of an optimal point of timing. It should be
noted that even though interleaving may take place, there is no
guarantee that this will automatically lead to successful task
completion. Risko et al. (2013) further defined the notion of efficient
interleaving, in which participants may be able to selectively attend to
the most important parts of the lecture and then redirect attention
elsewhere when they view the cost of not paying attention as being
minimal. So, for example, we may pay attention in the lecture when
the instructor is saying something about exams and the types of topics
that might crop up. Once this material has been presented and the more
‘boring’ information about writing references in a report comes in, the
individual may switch off and daydream about what they are having
for dinner. What this means in real terms is that there will be a
reduction in the amount of attention that is being paid to the lecture,
but theoretically there should be no real impact on the loss of key
points mentioned in the lecture.
The absorption account: Risko et al. (2013) noted that individuals
actually spend 40 per cent of their time during lectures engaged in
mind wandering when they are not presented with a secondary task.
This in turn would suggest that students are not devoting 100 per cent
of their attentional resources to a task that essentially constitutes one
task. In this case we could theoretically add to an existing task by
taking up the 40 per cent currently being used for mind wandering
with non-lecture-related activities (e.g. email or texting). This would
mean that there would have to be a reduction in mind wandering
(which is absorbed into the additional task) but there should be no
additional cost (in terms of errors or loss of information).
 The enhanced arousal account: There is an opposing perspective that
actually engaging in an additional activity may improve the retention
of information. Previous work by Andrade (2009) noted that adding an
irrelevant task for participants to do whilst they were performing a
sustained attention task actually improved performance on it in
comparison to performing the task by itself. The suggestion here is that
adding the extra task increases the level of arousal in the individual to
a level that is ‘optimal’, which thus results in a facilitation effect for
the primary task. This premise has some basis in previous research,
with findings noting that presenting task-irrelevant information can
actually lead to an enhancement in performance in the primary task
(Broadbent, 1971; Risko et al., 2013).
Risko et al. (2013) noted findings consistent with the resource competition
account. Those participants who were based in a laptop access condition
were asked to answer a number of emails or respond to updates on
Facebook. Overall, these participants paid less attention to the lecture
(hence this is competition for the resource of attention) and performed
poorly in a test of lecture material. This key piece of research again
reiterates the difficulty that is posed for those attempting to multitask in an
education environment. There is a residual issue associated with the
increased availability and use of digital technology at all levels of
education. If differences do exist between individuals and their capacity to
perform two tasks at once (e.g. Cain and Mitroff, 2011; Ophir et al., 2009)
this could mean that employing digital technology as part of a learning
environment may disadvantage some students.
Closely aligned to the research into multitasking are the findings linked to
task switching and its impact on education. A variety of researchers have
showed that the practice of task switching could have a direct impact on
learning and retention of information. Marci (2012) compared two groups
of participants according to their uptake of digital technology and their
propensity to task switch. In the late adopters’ group they switched between
tasks approximately 17 times per hour in comparison with 27 times per
hour for the early adopters. In research by Rosen et al. (2013) they found
that for most students in their study, on-task behaviour was maintained for
less than six minutes before switching to another task during a 15-minute
observation period. This difficulty in sustained attention was related directly
to distractions from technology, such as accessing Facebook or watching
television. In terms of preferences for task switching, those individuals who
were in a technology-rich environment and had more technology within
their reach demonstrated a higher preference for task switching rather than
focusing on one single task. Similarly, those who demonstrated a preference
for task switching also exhibited shortened attention spans during their
study periods, again highlighting the potential link between this aspect of
cognition and learning. The researchers also noted an interesting trend for
participants to have potentially pre-loaded their working environment with
a plethora of technology so that they were able to engage in potentially
distracting task-switching behaviours. This would indicate a clear intention
to engage in task switching even before the actual study period has been
entered into, which seems to hint towards a dispositional element for this
type of behaviour. Once again it was noted that those who were checking
SNS during their study period were also linked to a lower overall score on
their final GPA.
Digital Technology and Learning
Kessler (2011) noted that in a sample of 500 students, 73 per cent were
unable to study without some form of technology. In the same sample, 38
per cent reported not being able to go ten minutes without checking their
smartphone for new messages and updates, while 64 per cent of the students
in Lenhar’s (2010) study admitted to texting in class, even in instances
where mobile phones were actively banned in those environments. Rosen et
al. (2011) also explored the impact of getting interrupted during a lecture in
which participants were sent a number of text messages to which they had
to respond. They found that those who received and interacted with text
messages performed worse on a post-lecture test of content versus a control
group who did not receive any messages. Wei et al. (2012) also explored the
impact of texting during lessons and found evidence of reduced attention in
the classroom. From this initial exploration of research it would appear that
the use of mobile phones within the classroom again link to the capacity-
based discussion, and engaging in texting during a session could be
impacting on the individuals’ capacity to listen effectively (Kuznekoff and
Titsworth, 2013). As we have seen in Chapter 6, mobile phones can have a
key impact on other skilled tasks, in particular that of driving, so the
potential link to an impact in education is not an extreme leap of faith.
Kuznekoff and Titsworth (2013) randomly assigned participants to three
groups. In the low distraction group, participants received a simulated text
or SNS notification once every 60 seconds. In the high distraction group
they received the same types of notifications but had these once every 30
seconds. In quantitative terms, those in the high distraction group viewed
approximately 24 texts or posts and those in the low distraction group
viewed approximately 12. There was also a control group that received no
such text messages during the lecture. All this took place in the context of a
12-minute lecture that explored a variety of key theoretical concepts from
psychology. The results present quite a startling eye opener, particularly
when we think about how students are using digital technology in the
context of their studies. The control group scored the higher on a post-
lecture multiple-choice test, followed by the low distraction group and then
the high distraction group. There was a significant difference in terms of the
scores between the control and the high distraction group, and the
researchers presented a critical discussion point. Once the scores were
converted into a percentage, the control group had an average score of 66
per cent, with the high distraction group presenting an average score of 52
per cent. In the context of most UK universities this is a difference in
classification of a high 2:1 and a low 2:2. Food for thought for all those
back-row text-senders who think they can attend a session and while away
their time sending messages to their friends!
Kuznekoff and Titsworth (2013) also noted another critical difference
according to the level of detail contained within the notes taken from the
lecture and the level of distraction presented to that group. Kuzenkoff and
Titsworth highlight previous research which showed that most students
typically recall just 40 per cent of the information that has been presented in
a lecture, leaving a vast 60 per cent being unaccounted for (Kiewra, 1984).
For the experimental groups in Kuznekoff and Titsworth’s (2013) study,
they found that whereas the control group recalled around about 33 per cent
of the detail contained within the lecture, the low distraction group recalled
27 per cent and the high distraction group just 20 per cent.
There are some critical limitations for this research, however, with
Kruashaar and Novak (2010) presenting an argument that if the use of
technology is linked directly to the context of the course, this could actually
be helpful to learning. This doesn’t, however, get away from other
extraneous texting that might be going on, particularly when smartphones
have become the ubiquitous tool of choice for most students in terms of
social and educational communication. There are other key limitations here,
and the research by Kuznekoff and Titsworth (2013) had a particularly
small sample of just 47 participants who were split into three groups.
Although they fulfilled the necessary requirements in terms of conducting
the key statistical test, there is ample room for engaging in wider research
with a larger sample size. Similarly, the use of simulated text messages that
are not directly relevant to the participants’ interest could have also had an
impact on the level of engagement. Individuals may be more likely to view
a text message and respond if they have a vested interest in that particular
message. Finally, the lecture used only lasted for 12 minutes and contained
a variety of complex ideas that were presented in a very short space of time.
For most undergraduate students lectures typically last in the region of 50
minutes, and although they contain a variety of key theories or topics, these
will be less condensed, which could in turn allow for better retention rates
even when information has been missed through inattention.
Does Internet Use Impact on Academic
Performance?
A variety of research has been presented in order to assess the impact that
both use and abuse of the Internet can have on the individual’s academic
performance. Amongst some of the earlier research, the focus was very
much on the impact excessive levels of Internet use had on academic
attainment, with the general consensus being that the increased amount of
time being spent online led individuals to suffer from sleep disturbances
(Brenner, 1997; Cheung and Wong, 2011; Choi et al., 2009). Although the
link is often not explicitly made, it has been suggested that these
disturbances could in turn contribute to poor academic performance, with
individuals experiencing fatigue and poor attentional focus during the
school day (Hazelhurst et al., 2011). For example, Chou and Hsiao (2000)
noted that those who were classified as Internet-addicted were more
negatively impacted in their daily life routines, including sleep and classes.
Early research by Kubey et al. (2001) also noted that those who were
classified in a ‘heavy recreational Internet use’ group had impaired
academic performance. This excessive Internet use was also linked to
individuals staying up later, missing classes, as well as experiencing fatigue
during the day. Impaired academic performance in this initial study was
linked more directly with the use of synchronous mechanisms of
communication such as chat rooms or IM rather than through the use of
email. Later work by Chen and Peng (2008) explored the influence of
students’ Internet use on a variety of measures, including their interpersonal
relationships, self-evaluation and academic performance. They found
significant differences in academic achievement between those spending
greater than 33 hours per week on the Internet (classified as heavy or
excessive users of the Internet) and those who reported spending less time
online. Those who fell into the ‘non-heavy’ Internet-use group reported
better grades and expressed a better level of satisfaction with their learning
compared with the heavy Internet-use group.
Some researchers have noted that much of the previous research exploring
the impact of the Internet on academic attainment has been based on
students’ perceptions of academic attainment rather than actual academic
grades (Englander et al., 2010). Englander et al. (2010) noted that previous
research in the area had focused more on whether or not students ‘believed’
the use of the Internet had a positive or negative impact on their academic
work. In order to counter this criticism, the research by Englander et al.
(2010) noted a statistically significant relationship between the number of
hours the student was spending online and their examination performance
in an end of course test. Those individuals who reported spending more
time on the Internet were more likely to receive lower grades, again
suggesting there is a link between higher levels of Internet use and
academic attainment. Work by Hazelhurst et al. (2011) highlighted the
relationship between both Internet use and SNS use on academic
performance quite succinctly. They classified individuals as either heavy or
light users of the Internet as determined by the amount of data they were
downloading over the period of the first half of the academic year. Those in
the heavy users’ group performed more poorly as measured through their
average grades than those classified as light users. Moreover, those in the
heavy-usage group were associated with higher failure rates, significantly
more than those in the light Internet-use group. There was also a
statistically significant difference according to the average mark of those
classified as very heavy Internet users and very light users, with those in the
first group having an average mark of 50.4 per cent and those in the latter
group having an average mark of 54 per cent. Whilst such a difference may,
on the face of it, appear to be a trivial 4 per cent, if this difference was on
the edge of a degree banding it could mean the difference between a 2:2 and
a 2:1.
Hazelhurst et al. (2011) also examined whether the time of day for
browsing activities had a direct impact on academic performance. They
noted that for those individuals choosing to browse in a typically asocial
period (between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.), academic performance
was significantly impacted. Again, as hinted earlier, the potential link here
is between individuals experiencing fatigue and poorer capacity to
concentrate on study-related activities as a result of sleep disturbance.
Hypertext and Hypermedia
There is another aspect of the digital environment that can directly impact
the way in which we experience information and in turn the way in which
we learn. Much of the information that we experience on the web is usually
presented on a variety of levels using a mixture of images and hypermedia.
For the purposes of this discussion, I am using the term ‘hypermedia’ to
refer to a webpage that consists of multiple types of visual and auditory
stimulation. These types of environments place a number of requirements
on the individual. They may require some level of interaction as well as the
requirement to make a number of decisions based on the content that is
contained within. As a learning environment, it has been noted that such
environments may increase the cognitive load the user experiences in
contrast to processing more traditional, linear forms of text.
Figure 8.1 An adequate example of hypertext taken from a Wikipedia page
outlining what Hypertext is!
Lee and Tedder (2003) examined the impact individual differences in
working memory capacity could have upon the use of such hypermedia
environments. The researchers proposed that if hypermedia environments
place additional demands on our information processing capabilities, then
differences in such capacity should be reflected in performance. For
instance, those who have greater working memory capacity should (in
theory) be less affected by the hypermedia environment as they are capable
of distributing the load better, whereas those with lower capacity will have
limited resources, therefore demonstrating more distractibility (Smart,
2010). Lee and Tedder (2003) split students into two groups according to
their working memory capacity and asked them to navigate through a
variety of web-based environments. Their results demonstrated that for
those who fell into the low working memory capacity group, recall from a
hypermedia environment akin to an actual website was lower than their
capacity to recall information from standard linear text. This research is
important as it actually demonstrates that our capacity to interact with
online environments, such as those rich in media, is more specifically
governed by our own inherent cognitive capacity. To put this simply, those
of us who have lower working memory capacity are actually limiting the
amount of information we are taking in from such environments, missing
out on elements that those with higher working memory are experiencing.
It has also been noted that the use of hypertext can also impact on our
ability to interact with and integrate new pieces of information from the
digital environment. Hypertext is embedded in the vast majority of websites
and gives users the opportunity to access new or associated information
from within the body of text they are currently reading (DeStefano and
LeFevre, 2007). However, as DeStefano and LeFevre (2007) and Smart
(2010) pointed out, the flexibility that is afforded by the use of such a
mechanism could be a source of increased cognitive load. Crucially,
particularly in the context of our current discussion, it appears that being
presented with and using hypertext presents a potential for processing that
is seen as being more cognitively demanding as opposed to the reading of
normal linear text (DeStefano and LeFevre, 2007).
DeStefano and LeFevre (2007) suggested that the use of hypertext-based
environments engages an aspect of the cognitive system that has been
termed ‘dual-processing’ (Baddeley and Logie, 1999). In its simplest form,
dual-processing refers to the level at which performance becomes impaired
on two tasks due to the number of cognitive resources they simultaneously
share at the same time (DeStefano and LeFevre, 2007; Wickens, 2002). For
the example of engaging in a hypertext environment, the individual is
required to engage in spatial navigation (not only on the page but also
between webpages), the comprehension of information as well as
remembering their current position in webspace or text. In the instance
where a concurrent task requires the user to manipulate or remember other
complex spatial information, resources already deployed on interacting with
the hypertext will have to be redirected. According to DeStefano and
LeFevre (2007) this process would therefore result in a decrease in task
performance, both on the concurrent task and the comprehension of
hypertext.
DeStefano and LeFevre’s (2007) research aimed to explore the suggestion
that our capacity to successfully interact with hypertext is partly related to
the number of structural links that are embedded within it. The researchers
hypothesised that the level of disruption users experience when using such
hypertext is increased as the number of links or possible pathways from a
corresponding node also increases. The authors define a node in the context
of hypertext as a specific decision point in the text, such as a highlighted
link to another series of webpages. Here the individual has two choices:
they either click on the node and follow it to another webpage or portal, or
they don’t click on it and remain on that page. According to DeStefano and
LeFevre’s (2007) work, an increase in cognitive load is directly related to
the additional decision-making processes that have to be made as the
number of nodes increases.
In an early exploration of the use of hypertext Zhu (1999) compared the
learning performance of two groups of participants. In one group, the
participants read material from a hypertext document containing 3–7 links
per node, whilst the other group had hypertext that contained 8–12 links per
node. In a later test of learning performance via the use of a multiple choice
test and a fact-based summary, it was shown that for those who had learned
in the 3–7 links per node performance was better than for those who were in
the higher links per node group.
Antonenko and Niederhauser (2010) further explored the impact that
processing hypertext had upon cognitive load alongside factors that could
mediate such an issue. They introduced reading hypertext as an exploratory
activity, which in turn requires an additional navigational element.
According to the researchers, reading linear-based text is sequential in
nature and we follow a set path when we read this type of information. In
contrast, processing hypertext is viewed as a more fluid process in which
individual paragraphs are presented as unique nodes of information.
Accordingly, such a node of information is viewed as standalone, and there
is no guarantee that information presented prior to it or afterwards has been
accessed by the end user. Crucially, Antoneko and Niederhauser suggested
that hypertext presents a unique online activity and places additional strains
on cognitive processes that will, in turn, impact on cognitive load.
Niederhauser et al. (2000) had already previously noted that extracting the
meaning of information from a hypertext environment places a variety of
additional demands on the end user. These additional demands are seen to
involve aspects of both cognitive (decision-making processes linked to the
integrating individual nodes of information) and metacognitive
(highlighting navigational pathways to information, assessing which ones to
follow vs. others). It is suggested that the presence of these dual
information-processing tasks leads to a residual increase in cognitive load
that provides the contrast with more linear-based reading (Antonenko and
Niederhauser, 2010; Niederhauser et al., 2000; Shapiro and Niederhauser,
2004).
Antonenko and Niederhauser (2010) suggested some potential mechanisms
that could be useful in mediating the impact of hypertext on cognitive load.
These mechanisms (which the researchers termed ‘leads’) serve to reduce
the conflict between attention directed towards reading and the additional
load coming from navigating hypertext. Leads present the user with a brief
snapshot of information that shows relevant information associated with the
linked node but allows the end user the capacity to keep the current node of
information visible (Antonenko and Niederhauser, 2010). This means that
users are able to make an assessment of the suitability of the currently
selected node in terms of its relevance to the current task objectives without
having to navigate away from the current website. This is therefore seen to
reduce the cognitive load by removing the meta-cognitive aspect of
hypertext navigation (Antonenko and Niederhauser, 2010).
Antonenko and Niederhauser (2010) actually showed that in conditions
where a lead to node information was presented there was a reduction in
cognitive load. Participants also spent significantly more time reading
material in the lead condition as opposed to conducting web-based
navigation activities, thereby reducing the split in attention between the two
reading and navigating. The evidence also showed that in tasks where a lead
was used there was better overall retention of information in terms of
domain (subject)-specific knowledge as well as structural details (how
material is organised in terms of hierarchical structure).
Critical for the discussion here is the notion that hypertext and hypermedia
are presented as using distinct and different cognitive processes to those
used in processing traditional linear-based text (Antonenko and
Niederhauser, 2010; DeStefano and LeFevre, 2007). These additional
processes require individuals to not only make a variety of decisions related
not only to which links to follow from a respective node, but also to
secondary processes involved in navigation and prospective assessment of
relevant information. Crucially our capacity to process information in such
environments is linked not just to our own working memory capacity, but
also to the number of embedded hyperlinks presented in the text. When the
individual encounters hypertext that is laden with multiple links per node,
there is a residual increase in cognitive load when comparing it to that of
normal text (Smart, 2010).
The Use of Technology in Education and Learning
For many of you, this book may have been used as part of your own
research or indeed as part of an assessment. The use of digital technology in
educational settings is becoming of increasing interest. On the one side,
there is the argument that employing the use of digital technology in
schools and universities is a step into the future. Many students in higher
education experience learning through any number of virtual learning
environments (VLEs). These software-based environments help tutors to
manage course material for their students, but also present students with the
opportunity to access material in their own time. Browne et al. (2006) noted
that the VLE had become a universal feature of higher-education
establishments, with approximately 95 per cent of institutions using these
systems. However, there is a question about the utility of such systems and
their impact on learning, with adoption often being driven more by market
forces rather than a wish to improve learning (Browne et al. 2006). Brown
(2010) presented an argument that the future could be far from bright for
the VLE. The discussion focused on the current use of VLEs and the drive
to encourage imaginative and creative mechanisms for their use in the
context of learning. Rather than these practices being emergent, Brown
(2010) argues that they are actually in decline, pointing towards market
saturation, declining uptake and a lack of research to demonstrate their
effectiveness being at the heart of this. So what does this mean for the
future of learning via digital technology? Well, according to Brown (2010)
it is the advent of Web 2.0. The advent of Web 2.0 is set to change the way
in which we interact with material on the Internet – the change being a
fundamental one, with individuals going from being passive recipients of
material to being actively involved in the creation and dissemination of
information. The concept of Web 2.0 has been conceptualised as:
 a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form
the basis for the next generation of the Internet … characterized by
user participation, openness, and network effects (Muser and O’Reilly,
2006: 4).
According to Muser and O’Reilly, the Internet has changed how we view
the tools we are interacting with – no longer do we ask about the version
number of software, because we are more focused on the services that are
being provided. So this process takes the Internet away from being a piece
of software and more towards a tool, and a tool that could change the way
in which we learn. The mechanisms for learning via Web 2.0 could
potentially change the overall way in which we think about learning in any
educational environment. Web-based applications (such as YouTube and
iTunes) exist to help facilitate the creation of material and its rapid
dissemination, bringing ideas to life and allowing a learning process that is
as much about the experience as it is about the knowledge we retain. Web
2.0 tools allow the individual to tailor their learning experience through the
use of personal learning environments (PLEs) and place the student at the
heart of their own learning experience (Rahimi et al., 2015). The flexibility
of such learning environments gives the individual access to material
without the need to leave their working environment, say to go to the
library to find a book, and also removes the time constraints that might also
face us when we are trying to source information (e.g. waiting weeks for a
book to be returned). It should be noted, however, that the use of PLEs is
still very much in its infancy, with a range of issues related to their structure
and definition being evident in the literature (Harmelen, 2006; Martindale
and Dowdy, 2010; Rahimi et al., 2015).
Schools and universities alike face a broader dilemma in terms of allowing
the use of digital technology within the teaching environment. As
previously discussed in this chapter, when looking at the use of digital
technology in the classroom and the lecture theatre, there appear to be some
issues with allowing the free use of such digital devices. Research has noted
that there is an impact on the capacity for students to engage in the learning
process as well as engage in activities on their smartphones, tablets and
laptops. On the flip side the use of digital technology in the classroom
invariably offers a number of benefits, particularly in the context of Web
2.0 discussed above. In order to be immersive and interactive, these devices
have to be used, but how do we focus their use without the distractions
afforded through non-academic use? The evidence shows that individuals
who engage in media multitasking whilst learning retain less information
and therefore learn less, so it maybe that more careful thought is required
when exploring the use of digital technology in the context of education.
During one of my own teaching sessions I brought this issue up with a
selection of third-year psychology students. After much discussion, one of
the students who had been sitting quietly at the back (engrossed in their
smartphone I should add) suddenly became very animated. The central
point to the student’s argument was that, if we knew (via research) that the
use of digital technology in the classroom impacted on education, why did
we allow students to use it during teaching? My response was to ask the
students what would happen if the university banned the use of such
devices, or at the very least tried to implement a policy restricting their use
solely for academic purposes. You may want to explore this with a group of
your peers and ask them how they would respond if their use of digital
technology was curtailed during learning sessions. For many of the students
in the room, they saw it as their right to have access to their smartphones
wherever they were, and preventing them from using them was just ‘not
on’. So there has to be a balance, but at the moment we don’t know where
that balance lies – students need to learn, and students want to learn, and we
want to find new and imaginative ways to get students to learn, but then
how many times does learning get disturbed by a smartphone ringing, a
message alert, or the dreaded ‘silent vibration on the desk’?
Summary
So as we have seen, there appears to be a variety of issues related to task
switching and dual tasking in the context of education. Some of these issues
may be linked directly to the cognitive make-up of the individual, such as
individual differences in aspects of attentional control. Similarly, as
discussed in earlier chapters of the book, our capacity to do two things at
once is pretty limited, and usually if we are doing two things at the same
time, one of these will ‘give’. This could lead to an error, or more likely the
inability to recall specific information that has been presented to us. It has
been noted that learning requires focused attention, and only by using this
can deeper learning take place. Therefore any activity that serves to distract
us and direct our attention elsewhere will interfere with this capacity to
learn. If individuals are not paying attention, particularly within the learning
environment, memories are not encoded correctly, hence resulting in poorer
retention of information – the net result being the inability to recall the
information they have been presented with.
However, it isn’t all bad for learning with technology and the research
would seem to suggest it can work, but only when it is used in a targeted
and contextually specific manner. This means that the use of digital
technology has to be directly related to the subject matter being introduced.
In turn, such media has to be well crafted in its ability to engage the student
rather than confuse, disorientate or over-complicate the learning process.
Any additional load that comes from trying to figure out how to use an
online learning tool or over-complicated program will ultimately result in
more time and effort being devoted to this, rather than learning itself.
Digital technology can be seen to enhance student engagement, within both
the academic environment as well as the non-academic, extra-curricular
activities that students participate in. However, there is a paradox here as
better learning comes from better student engagement, but better student
engagement only comes from better, more directed attention.
It would appear that there is a current battle being fought within education
establishments across the world. On the one hand educators are constantly
faced with the potential for students to be distracted by ‘social’ use of
digital devices. On the other hand there is exploration of how these same
such devices could be used as tools to enhance student learning.

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9 Decision-Making in the Online
Environment Credibility
Learning Aims and Objectives
To explore the mechanisms that underlie decision-making in the
online digital environment;
to review the key heuristics used when we are making a
judgement of credibility online;
to understand how making a judgement related to the credibility
of information has changed in the light of digital technology.
Overview
In order to introduce this chapter on decision-making in the context of
digital technology I need present a quick overview of the background to the
area. As discussed in Chapter 2, the notion that humans have a limited
capacity for processing information is a central tenet to cognitive
psychology (Lang, 2000). This limited capacity places restrictions not only
on the amount of time but also the cognitive effort we can spend assessing
between available alternatives and reaching a decision. When the individual
has no access to an existing decision from past experience, or where the
information presented in the pursuit of a decision is incomplete, individuals
will often use a fallback ‘best guess’ heuristic method (Tversky and
Kahneman, 1974). A heuristic is seen as a general rule of thumb or mental
short cut that, for the majority of the time, will give us an approximate
solution. The use of heuristic strategies is linked to other factors, such as the
amount of existing information individuals have on the current topic, how
well defined the current task is and how easy it is to find information to
make a judgement. There are, however, potential pitfalls to the use of these
mechanisms related to the very way in which they have been created. As
heuristics are based on our own experiences, the frequency of encountering
different things can play a critical role in our later decision-making
activities. Say, for example, that you have a bad experience with a certain
website; this may in turn make you avoid choosing this site when later
searching for another piece of information. We don’t like to spend a lot of
time thinking about decisions that can be defaulted quickly to something we
might have experienced previously. The established research in the area of
decision-making presents the human as a ‘cognitive miser’ (Fiske and
Taylor, 1991) with an emphasis on maximum gain (in terms of information
retrieved) through little expense (in terms of cognitive resources expended).
Wirth (2007) noted a set of theories based in the area of social cognition
that are directly relevant to decision-making in the context of cyberspace
(Chaiken et al., 1989). Dual-process theories, such as the heuristic-
systematic model (HSM; see Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Todorov et al.,
2002), make the assertion that individuals can engage in two different
modes of information processing. On the one hand, there is a systematic or
comprehensive approach to decision-making; in this mode the individual
will explore all avenues of information that are seen as being relevant to the
task in hand and make decisions based on a comparison with previously
stored knowledge. This processing ‘mode’, according to Todorov et al.
(2002), is limited by the resources the individual has available and those
associated with the current task demands. In situations where the cognitive
resources available are severely limited (possibly due to the complexity of
the current task), then an individual will switch to the alternative heuristic
mode of processing. This is a non-analytical approach where an individual
only focuses on basic information in order to allow them to make a
judgement (2002).
According to the HSM model (Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Todorov et al.,
2002) the two modes of processing can act simultaneously, with interaction
between the two dependent directly on the task requirements and previous
experience related to the area of decision-making. In certain instances the
two processes can act in a cumulative nature. When this takes place
information is obtained independently through the two processes, and
where the two processes converge they add more weight to the current
decision-making process. A systematic exploration of the reviews for a
specific brand name and product can also support our previous experience
with a particular brand name. In this instance the evaluative (systematic)
aspect of reviewing different brands adds to the experiential (heuristic)
processing, therefore giving more strength to the decision made. In the
instance where a review of the relevant information leads to an ambiguous
situation in which both processes sit in direct opposition according to
proposed decision, the information obtained from the systematic approach
will cancel out that which is obtained from the heuristic-based processing
(Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Wirth, 2007). Essentially, what happens is the
information from the heuristic mode of processing is ‘turned down’ in terms
of its perceptual volume, whilst the information gained from the systematic
approach is ‘turned up’ or attenuated.
There have been some attempt made to highlight how these dual-process
theories can be applied to information-seeking behaviour, particularly in
terms of searching for online health information (Zarro, 2012). The initial
work by Zarro (2012) suggested that adopting a dual-process model for way
in which users make decisions, could account for the evolution of such a
process. An information searcher will begin with limited information about
the area they may be searching in, so will engage in the development of a
strategy. Feedback from this initial strategy will then inform the current
process and help to guide further strategy related to searching for
information. From the perspective of searches involving specific health-
related issues, individuals may begin with a great deal of motivation but
have limited domain-specific knowledge. Here users adopting a strict
systematic approach would search for information in a very cognitively
demanding way, where new material is analysed and compared with
previously held information. In contrast, users opting for a more heuristic-
based strategy do not suffer the rigours of such a systematic analysis, have
reduced cognitive demands but place an increased demand on personal
experience and information held in memory (which could be ‘damaged’ or
biased towards one particular aspect or decision). This process also draws
on salient information that may be irrelevant to the task in hand, but which
the individual may see as relevant based on their preconceptions. It should
be noted that this research is wholly descriptive in nature, and Zarro (2012)
presents a detailed exploration of how such research will be conducted in a
prospective manner, but to date there is no evidence that such an empirical
investigation has been conducted. As such, there is no set reason as to how
and why individuals swap between these two distinct processes. Given
further evidence from the research into heuristic-based reasoning it could be
assumed that such strategies are implemented automatically outside of the
direct conscious control of the user.
The internal rules or schemas that govern the use of heuristics (functioning
almost like an internal script that individuals follow when they encounter a
specific situation) are stored in long-term memory. As such, the ability to
use these scripts is governed directly by the same processes that influence
our retrieval of any memory of these governed directly by the same
processes that would apply to any other memory. Todorov et al. (2002)
broadly classified these aspects under three headings:
Availability: Heuristic rules must be available to the individual in order
for them to be used; as such, they have to be stored and retained in
long-term memory, which assumes that the individual has had some
prior experience where these rules have been learned.
Accessibility: This aspect of heuristic processing suggests that the rule
itself must be accessible from long-term memory in order for it to be
used. Accordingly, the notion of accessibility has two residual
implications; notably, if a previous situation in which a heuristic has
been used is more memorable, this will in turn influence the likelihood
of that mechanism being used again. In contrast, where there is a poor
recollection of a previously used mechanism, perhaps due to
interference or decay of the memory, then this will reduce the
likelihood of such a heuristic being used. As a consequence the
accessibility of such resources can be seen to directly influence the
application of the most relevant heuristic.
Application: This makes reference to how appropriate the specific
heuristic is to the current application; some heuristic strategies are far
more useful in certain contexts than others. Where there is a degree of
overlap between the subject material on which a decision has to be
made and a heuristic existing in long-term memory, this will lead to
the increased likelihood of that specific heuristic being used.
Bringing this back into the context of our current discussion, the use of
heuristic strategies could lead us to choose the top link from a situation
page returned from a search engine. Based on previous experience of such
results, individuals may assume that information placed at the top of these
searches represents the most accurate and best link available to access the
information they need (Wirth et al., 2007). Evidence from Cutrell and Guan
(2007) has already shown that individuals are instinctively drawn to the top
of a search engine results page, and choose to ignore the information
presented lower down in the list of returned results. Granka et al. (2004)
also noted that in the context of search engine results users are drawn
towards a ‘golden triangle’ located in the top left corner of the page, paying
most attention to the first result and less so to the subsequent results. This
heuristic-based strategy is potentially based in a skill that has been learned
and where information presented at the top of the results page has yielded
the most relevant results (Lorigo et al., 2008).
How Are We Using the Internet in Our Decision-
Making?
In order for any decision to be made, we need to gather information so that
we can clearly understand all of the various options that lie before us.
Similarly we also need to make an assessment of the potential consequences
for opting to take one option over another, both for the short and long term.
This could include an assessment of what will be affected in the present or
perhaps an exploration of how the affects of the decision evolves over a
period of time. Similarly, decisions differ in their level of complexity, from
deciding which new mobile phone to buy, deciding what future career path
you may want to take, or choosing which degree course to enrol on.
Irrespective of the magnitude of the decision, the processes that underlie the
decision will share some similarities – we may consult our friends, those in
authority or those who have specialist knowledge, or we could surf the
Internet looking for the answers to our dilemmas.
The Internet has become the most ubiquitous source of information,
allowing us to gather relevant information from one place with just a few
clicks. In research conducted by the PEW Internet Research Centre
(Horrigan and Rainie, 2006) it was noted that 45 per cent of Internet users
in the US had used it to help them make major life-changing decisions. The
research also detailed what types of decisions individuals had used the
Internet for:
54 per cent of adults used the Internet to help a significant other cope
with a major illness – this increased to 94 per cent when individuals
were asked whether the Internet had been used to help themselves cope
with a major illness.
45 per cent said that the Internet had played a major role in making
important financial decisions, such as investments or savings.
43 per cent had used the Internet to explore new places to live.
According to the report’s authors, the Internet appears to become of critical
importance when a decision can be based more directly on advice from
what they termed ‘non-experts’. For these types of decisions, such as
looking for additional training or perhaps choosing a place to study, the
need for expert knowledge is seen as less critical than the experiential
element. To locate trustworthy information will also place a direct burden
on the individual, in terms of not only the cognitive resources that have to
be devoted to the task, but also in terms of a time commitment. It becomes
easy to understand why individuals take the quick and easy option when
looking for information online, and why they place such a heavy reliance on
material that can be easily accessed from places such Wikipedia. These
sources have the appearance of trustworthiness due to their popularity,
which fails to account for the fact that anyone, irrespective of their level of
knowledge, can post on such sites (Metzger and Flanagin, 2013).
However, there is one important issue that is often overlooked when we
search for information online, and that is the question of credibility. As the
Internet is seen as a primary source of information for many individuals in
today’s society, the assessment of credibility is seen as a critical element of
web-based literacy (Hargittai and Fullerton, 2010; Schwarz and Morris,
2011). The obvious ramifications for misplaced credibility to online sources
can be far reaching, affecting not only our personal lives but also our
working lives too. This could include aspects such as basing financial
investments on out-of-date or false information or buying a product based
on false or incorrect reviews. In the context of credibility judgements online
the heuristic mechanism discussed at the start of this chapter is often
engaged. Most adult users will browse non-credible websites with the
assumption that the popularity of such sites equates directly to the
credibility and truthfulness of the material contained on them (Hargittai and
Fullerton, 2010). As will be discussed later on in this chapter, this practice
is associated with the consensus heuristic and bandwagon heuristic (Sundar,
2008). The use of such heuristics in potentially critical decisions shows how
much reliance individuals will place on learned rules and past experiences
that may be seriously biased by the behaviour of others.
If we go back to the work presented by Suler (2005) in the first chapter, he
talked about the concept of ‘net democracy’. In a time before the Internet, if
you wanted to get something published or to become an expert in a
particular area there were key processes and mechanisms you had to follow.
Essentially these processes served to ensure the sanctity of knowledge and
expertise, and included processes such as getting a book published, writing
a journal article and submitting it for review. However the advent of the
Internet changed all of this and made it a lot easier for any individual to
voice their opinion, irrespective of their status or expertise. No central
group, person or organisation acts as a gatekeeper for the flow of
information onto the Internet, so the individual is tasked with two key
choices when they use it. Firstly they have to decide whether it is fit for
their current purpose and secondly they have to decide if they can accept
the risk that the source may not be entirely credible. Researchers such as
Flanagin and Metzger (2008) have noted that the rise of digital media may
not necessarily be changing the underlying mechanisms that we use in order
to assess the credibility of information. Instead they suggested that due to
the sheer volume of information contained in the online domain, individuals
have to turn to these skills more frequently. Burbules (2001) presented the
opposing view that credibility judgements in the context of cyberspace
should be viewed as being distinct from other forms of credibility
judgements. This view is grounded in the notion that the conventional
processes that are used for assessing credibility in the offline environment
may not be directly applicable online. Aspects such as speed of website
loading, complexity of features, link structure and functionality are all
unique to the online digital environment (Burbules, 2001). The common
mechanisms that we may have used in the past, such as assessing the
reputation of an individual who has presented information, are no longer as
reliable as they used to be, and before such individuals would act as
intermediaries in our search for information. Metzger and Flanagin (2013)
stated that digital media has produced a state of ‘disintermediation’, a
concept that was originally presented by Eysenbach (2007). This is
described as a state in which individuals are forced to search for large
amounts of information online – by themselves – without the help of such
intermediaries. The examples presented include individuals shopping online
and buying products without the assistance of a helpful sales person, or
perhaps a patient searching for information about an illness online without
the input from a medical expert (Metzger and Flanagin, 2013).
How Do We Define Credibility?
For the most part the modern account of credibility includes an element of
believability of the sources from which the information originates (Fogg,
2003; Tseng and Fogg, 1999). Self (1996) noted that individuals will often
refer to what they view as a credible source in terms of being ‘trustworthy’
and having some level of ‘expertise’ in a given area. Hilligoss and Rieh
(2008) also noted the interplay between dimensions of trustworthiness and
expertise, suggesting that when a source is defined as having expertise
individuals are more likely to judge the information originating from that
source as also being trustworthy. The individual has to make a judgement
about how trustworthy the individual is and the level of expertise they have
before they engage in the use of the information obtained from that source
(Hovland and Weiss, 1953; Metzger and Flanagin, 2013). Hovland and
Weiss (1953) noted very early on that the perceived trustworthiness of the
source significantly impacted on the willingness for the participant to
accept the message being conveyed. In defining credibility the literature
will often focus directly on the credibility of the source, the credibility of
the information or message (in instances where there is no reliable
information for the source) or these two points taken in combination
(Wathen and Burkell, 2002).
Searching for Credibility in the Online
Environment
As discussed previously, if you are searching for a credible source in the
offline environment there are a variety of things that can help you. First of
all, you are faced with a limited number of sources from which to get
information from; these might be books written by respected authors, or
perhaps an actual discussion with an expert in a particular area. Usually
information has to go through a rigorous set of processes to get to the stage
where it can be passed on to the general public, so we can usually be
assured that this information is, for the most part, credible. Credible sources
in the offline environment are also characterised by positions of authority,
usually conferred on them through a process of training or education, such
as doctors and professors. It is noted that such a process of assigning
credibility still exists in contemporary society, but the one key difference is
that the capacity for sharing information has removed some of the
boundaries and safeguards that were originally in place to ensure that
information was credible (Metzger and Flanagin, 2013). The capacity to
more easily produce information and distribute it means that more and more
information becomes easily accessible, but there is a cost. Researchers have
noted that even though such information exists, there is no guarantee that it
is credible. The mechanisms that filter out mistakes in the offline world do
not exist in the online world, meaning that individuals could be accessing
and using material that could be out of date or inaccurate (Flanagin and
Metzger, 2003; Metzger and Flanagin, 2013; Metzger et al., 2010; Rieh and
Daneilson, 2007).
Modelling Credibility Judgements in the Digital
Environment
A variety of researchers have attempted to present frameworks that can be
used to encapsulate the processes information seekers are using in order to
assess the credibility of something in the digital domain. The aim of this
section is to discuss these in more detail and assess their impact on how we
search for credible information online.
Fogg’s Prominence-Interpretation Theory
Previous research presented by Tseng and Fogg (1999) explored the
influence of technology in terms of its capability to persuade the end user
into making judgements or decisions. The research highlighted that the end
user will assess a wide variety of information in the process of deciding on
the credibility of a website:
Presumed credibility: This is based on the assumption made by the
individual that certain areas of the Internet are more credible than
others. For instance most end users would determine a website with
the suffix of .gov.uk as being a credible source of information.
Surface credibility: This relates directly to the aesthetic qualities of the
website in terms of professionalism and attention to detail. Most users
will assess a website’s credibility on first impressions, exploring
aspects such as layout, spelling and grammar.
Earned credibility: The individual will establish a level of trust
associated with a particular website over a period of time or number of
visits. Such trust will relate to the ease of use for that particular
website and the continuation of information being provided to the
individual being of a trustworthy nature.
Reported credibility: An objective assessment of credibility based
directly on expert feedback or the provision of certificates/awards
being given to that particular website.
The research by Fogg and others (Fogg, 2003; Fogg and Tseng, 1999; Fogg
et al., 2003) is important in this context as they noted that the end user
places a heavy reliance on the ‘look and feel’ of information in order to
make a direct assessment of credibility. In a similar context, McKnight and
Kacmar (2007) also noted that the professional appearance of a website was
a key indicator in the perceived credibility of that website (Schwarz and
Morris, 2011). Hargittai and Fullerton (2010) noted that the end user is
biased towards making decisions of credibility based directly on the
popularity of a particular website in the context of using search engines.
Many users will consistently misinterpret the notion of higher position in a
search engine result as being indicative of higher credibility. Such a notion
again links back to the notion of implicit trust that users place on results
being presented from search engines.
Fogg (2003) asserted that two things must happen when an individual is
making an assessment of credibility online:
1. The user has to notice something (this is the prominence element).
2. The user has to make a judgement about that thing (the interpretation
element.
Each of these aspects must be in place in order for a credibility assessment
to be made by the individual.
Prominence
Fogg (2003: 722) further elaborated on this element to his framework and
suggested that it is the ‘likelihood that a Web site element will be noticed or
perceived’. Fogg suggested that there are at least five contributing factors
that will affect the prominence of elements:
1. involvement: the direct involvement of the user within the search
environment, including their motivation and ability to study and
observe elements of the website;
2. topic: whether the website is related to news, entertainment, etc;
3. task: the current goal for the user, whether this is directly linked to
information seeking, online shopping or more general surfing
activities;
4. experience of the user in the context of the digital domain as well as in
the context of the current topic;
5. individual differences linked to specific elements such as learning
styles or literacy level.
Fogg suggested that one of the key influencers is the determinant of
prominence in the involvement of the user in the activity or task. If the
individual has a high level of motivation when they are approaching
specific website, this means they will be more stimulated and thus notice
more elements about the website. Fogg also links into work conducted by
Petty and Cacioppo (1986) and suggested that both motivation and ability
act in conjunction, so when both are high even more elements will be
noticed.
Interpretation
Fogg (2003) defined the process of interpretation as ‘a person’s judgement
about an element under examination’. This interpretation component to an
assessment of credibility is their own personal evaluation of a particular
website element; so this could include the aesthetics of the website or the
presence of misspelt words or poor grammar. As with prominence,
interpretation is also seen to have a number of contributory factors attached
to it, including:
1. assumption: those elements that are based in the user’s mind, such as
their past experience, which will impact on the way in which the
individual interprets something;
2. skills and knowledge of the user: in terms of their level of competency
around the subject matter of the website;
3. context: this relates not only to the environment in which the user is
searching for information, but also their current expectations.
According to Fogg’s interpretation element, it is suggested that all users
will not see the same website in exactly the same way. He presents the
example of culture and its role in making such decisions: if a particular
website contains a passage from a religious book, some individuals may
(based on their cultural context) be more inclined to see this as a positive
and therefore view the website as more credible; however, this could also
work in a negative way, with some individuals perhaps viewing the
presence of such information as being irrelevant, hence not credible.
Sundar’s MAIN model
In Sundar’s (2008) exploration of credibility judgements he talks about
technological affordances that are present in all forms of digital media
which, in turn, aid our capacity to make judgements. In simple terms, the
concept of an ‘affordance’ is simply a capacity or capability of something.
An example presented by Sundar links into the concept of hypermedia
discussed in the previous chapter. One of the affordances presented by
hypermedia is that it presents us with a capacity to interact within that
website; our capacity to interact could in turn trigger our capacity to make
judgements about the credibility of that site through a set of cognitive
heuristics (2008).
In his work Sundar noted that there were four key affordances that had
shown a significant impact on the capacity for individuals to make a
judgement about credibility. These were Modality (M), Agency, (A),
Interactivity (I) and Navigability (N). Importantly, Sundar suggested that
these affordances are present in some form or other in most aspects of
digital media. They in turn have the capacity to trigger the use of particular
cognitive heuristics linked directly to the assessment of credibility.
Modality
According to Sundar this is the most structural element of the content as it
is the most obvious when examining an interface. For the most part, digital
devices have a number of output modalities (or ways in which they can
interact with us), these being textual, video and pictorial, each of which
have different capacities to trigger heuristics linked to an assessment of
credibility. For example, text-based modality is, according to Sundar, the
least credible when compared with other modalities such as the auditory or
visual. This is partly due to the stages involving the creation and
interpretation of the text message, as the sender has to create information
about what they have seen or experienced and then the individual receiving
that information has to decipher that writing – this leaves the capacity for
not only irrelevant material to creep in, but also the possibility of deception
as well (Sundar, 2008).
Sundar noted several key heuristics that can be triggered via this modality
in the process of judgements for credibility. A selection of these included:
Realism Heuristic: This is the prediction that individuals are more
likely to believe information that has a sense of ‘real-world’
representation about it. For example, Sundar suggested that something
communicated through an audio-visual modality is seen as being more
trustworthy as its content more closely resembles what we would
expect in the real world. Essentially, individuals are more likely to
trust information they can see and hear rather than something they can
just read.
Old-Media Heuristic: This heuristic is related to the attribution of
higher credibility to information that is presented in a more traditional
format, something akin to that of newspapers. According to Sundar,
these representations trigger a perception of higher-level credibility as
they represent a medium that has more stringent policies when it
comes to the publication of information.
 Being-There Heuristic: This is a by-product of being immersed in the
virtual space that comes about as a result of significant advances in the
multimodal presentation of digital media (Sundar, 2008). As a result of
this it is suggested that an individual is more likely to conclude that
information is credible according to the intensity of their experience
with such information.
Distraction Heuristic: This heuristic comes about as a result of a drain
on the individual’s cognitive resources, particularly when an
experience contains a great deal of multimodal interaction (Sundar,
2008). The result of the distraction heuristic means that the individual
becomes so immersed in the digital environment that they have fewer
resources spare to engage in an effortful assessment of the credibility
of the presented information.
Agency
This cue relates to how individuals attribute ‘agency’ (or ‘who said this’) to
information that is being presented online. According to Sundar, attempting
to identify the true source of information presented on the Internet and
digital media is something of a tricky process. The agency cue presented by
Sundar builds upon this potential confusion, and means that we assign the
source of information to any number of ‘entities’ within the communication
of material. For example, we could conclude that the information has come
from the ‘front-end box’, which Sundar suggested relates directly to the
output device through which we view the information (e.g. the computer,
the Ipad, the television; Sundar, 2008). As before, Sundar (2008) noted a
number of key heuristics associated with this cue, including:
Bandwagon Heuristic: This is an over-reliance on the opinions of
others in an assessment of credibility. Essentially this heuristic
suggests that an individual is more likely to trust something if others
do, with credibility linked to popularity rather than truthfulness.
Authority Heuristic: In simple terms this heuristic relates directly to
the level of perceived authority the source has. This is a common
finding from the research in the area of credibility demonstrating that
one of the most significant cues for assigning credibility is related to
perceived ‘officialness’ of the source (Sundar, 2008). If an individual
views a source as having authority to speak in a particular arena, such
as an expert or official body, the message itself will be deemed as
being credible.
 Social Presence Heuristic: This one is interesting, particularly since
the advent of automated help clients that are embedded within
websites to offer the individual a point of interaction if they have
specific queries or problems. It appears that if the user believes that
they are interacting with a human rather than an inanimate object, they
are far more likely to attribute credibility to that information. Sundar
noted work which demonstrated that humans automatically assume
that the ‘thing’ on the other end of an online interaction is human
(Sundar and Nass, 2000). In instances where the interface relaying the
information is more human-like, the likelihood of the social presence
heuristic being activated is higher.
Interactivity
Sundar, when talking about the concept of interactivity, makes a
comparison between more traditional analogue media and those of digital
interfaces, with the latter possessing the capacity to instil more interaction.
According to Sundar, the level of interaction that is afforded by the
interface through which an individual is obtaining information will in turn
impact on the perceived level of credibility for that information. The notion
of interactivity is embedded in a variety of heuristics presented by Sundar,
which include:
Interaction Heuristic: This heuristic relates directly to the level of
interaction that is afforded to the end user during their use of digital
technology or media. In the instance where there is a higher level of
interaction with the system, the individual is able to tailor their
experience (and therefore the information they are receiving) more
precisely. This in turn will lead the user to assign more credibility to
the information they obtain as it is related directly to their current
needs and contains little or no irrelevant information.
Choice Heuristic: The level of choice an individual is presented with
when engaging in online interaction can also influence the level of
credibility both for the information obtained and the website. Choice
can be represented in a variety of ways, for example it can be related to
the ease of finding information or the level of detail that is presented.
In instances where information is really hard to find (and so it is hard
to make an informed choice) or when there is a lack of detail,
individuals are less likely to see that source as being credible. When
we are offered more choice alongside a greater level of detail and
 flexibility in the system, we are more likely to see the information
source as being credible (Sundar, 2008).
Flow Heuristic: When we interact with something, there is a certain
‘speed’ at which this interaction becomes optimal. If the speed of
interaction is too fast or too slow for our own personal preference, then
we start to get frustrated with the process and annoyed with the
system. This process is operationalised as the concept of ‘flow’, a
psychological concept akin to being ‘in the zone’ (Csikszentmihalyi,
1990). Where there is a break in the flow of our interaction with a
particular system, be this due to poor design, issues with connectivity
or interruptions presented by the system, there will be a residual
impact on the individual’s perception of the credibility of that source
and the information associated with it.
Navigability
Linked into the concept of interaction mentioned above, that of navigability
is again presented with a contrast between traditional forms of offline media
and those online. For the most part print media has a very static and linear
level of navigation, with the individual moving from one page to another in
order to progress through the information. With the advent of digital
technology, the navigability affordance presents the capacity for individuals
to engage in parallel processing, escaping from the linearity of presentation.
According to Sundar (2008) this is a process that serves to directly emulate
the processes that underlie the human memory system, and allows users to
navigate from one place to another without having to engage in any number
of intermediate steps. The credibility of a site therefore relies directly on its
navigational design, in terms of both its flexibility and intuitiveness. As
with the other affordances mentioned above, Sundar (2008) specifies a
number of key heuristics which are directly associated with navigability,
which include:
Browsing Heuristic: In the example presented by Sundar, he suggested
that a website that contains a lot of potential to encourage the user to
quickly skim through information and investigate the content of
various links would engage the use of this heuristic. By engaging the
browsing heuristic and allow the individual free and unfettered access
to information, the perceived credibility of that site is more likely to be
positive. According to Sundar, the freedom to browse at will presents
the user with a lack of bias, allows them to verify the information they
 have found as well as giving them the capacity to explore all of the
products/services the website is offering. Barriers to browsing would
appear to close off these opportunities, perhaps creating the feeling
that there is something to hide or that the source is trying to just show
one side of an argument or particular aspect of their product.
Scaffolding Heuristic: In the context of any experience in the online
environment individuals have the potential to lose focus or struggle
with their navigation of the website. Some websites integrate design
elements that help the individual explore different elements, perhaps
through clearer organisation or the use of navigational aids (e.g. a site
map, site landmarks or a hierarchical structure for links). These aids
serve to ‘scaffold’ the user’s experience and by doing so help them,
thus making them reflect more positively on the website’s credibility.
Sundar’s work is important as it shows a more realistic way in which
individuals are making a variety of judgements about the credibility of
online information. It is clear that the assessment of website credibility is a
far more complex and interactive processes in which individuals are seen to
be using a variety of heuristic strategies to assess such. More importantly,
these processes have evolved to cope with the new media that has emerged
as a result of the advent of digital technology. So from this perspective we
have evidence that there is a clear difference between those processes used
to assess traditional, analogue media (e.g. newspaper, television, books) and
those used in the online digital environment.
Cognitive Heuristics for Credibility Assessment
As a result of an extensive period of research, Metzger et al. (2010) distilled
five key heuristics that they claimed were used when making an assessment
about credibility of an element or source, as follows.
The Reputation Heuristic
According to the findings based on a series of focus groups, Metzger et al.
(2010) noted that one mechanism individuals used to assess credibility is to
rely on the reputation of the website or source. This is a shortcut, as it
essentially means that the individual is placing a heavy reliance on all those
people who have gone before them and stated that the product or website is
good, rather than the individual investing time and effort to explore these
claims. Individuals also transferred credibility between elements, with some
assuming that the information contained on a company’s website is
conferred the same level of credibility as the company due to the presence
of the company’s brand name. Accordingly the authors suggested that this
heuristic has its basis in another, simpler heuristic principle that means
individuals will favour a recognised alternative over less familiar ones in
order to reduce the amount of cognitive resources being expended (Metzger
et al., 2010).
The Endorsement Heuristic
The use of the endorsement heuristic suggests that individuals are often
inclined to accept a source or individual as being credible if others also do.
Metzger et al. (2010) suggested that the use of endorsement-based
heuristics is not something new and has been previously seen in work by
Hilligoss and Rieh (2008) and Flanagin and Metzger (2008), and is
sometimes referred to as conferred credibility. Wider work has also
discussed something called the ‘bandwagon heuristic’ (Sundar, 2008),
which leads people to use peripheral cues to select content based on the
popularity of the information rather than the actual content of that
information.
The Economic Model of Information Cascade suggests that individuals who
make initial selections and Internet choices can in turn influence or inform
those individuals coming later to the same search process (Bikhchandani et
al., 1992, 1998). Most humans like to think that they are making informed
choices when seeking or selecting online content, yet paradoxically want to
expend as little cognitive effort as possible in making those choices. There
are, however, instances when a person may not have sufficient information
to make an informed choice and is therefore reliant on others’ votes of
confidence, popularity or endorsements (e.g. Bikchandani et al., 1992,
1998; Choi et al., 2000; De Vany and Lee, 2001). This in turn serves to
create a cascade effect that grows over time. It also makes items more
popular in search engines through the algorithms used by the engines to
create a popularity bias for these items (e.g. Easley and Kleinberg, 2010).
Fu and Sim (2011) suggested that uncertainty reduction escalates the
cascade effect, which in turn leads to a bandwagon effect. Here individuals
are making an assertion based again on past experiences associated with the
notion that popularity of option equates to the most valid or correct choice.
Research has shown that individuals depend on the endorsement heuristic
more than on their own knowledge (Metzger et al., 2010) with experimental
demonstrations that buyer ratings as well as product reviews are sufficient
to create the bandwagon effect in e-commerce (Dholakia and Soltysinski,
2001; Hanson and Putler, 1996; Huang and Chen, 2006; Salganik et al.,
2006; Sundar et al., 2009) where higher vote counts and favourable reviews
are associated with product purchase or adoption.
In Metzger et al.’s (2010) work they noted that some participants actually
overrode their own opinions or views on a product in favour of the
comments or reviews of others in order to direct their judgements of
credibility. Sundar et al. (2009) had also previously noted that the
bandwagon heuristic can also significantly influence individual judgements
of credibility, with inflated star ratings or sales rankings being manipulated
in order to produce higher bandwagon effects – these in turn produce a
higher rating of credibility and as a side result increase the purchase intent
for that particular product.
The Consistency Heuristic
When using this heuristic, individuals are seen to go through a process of
cross-validation, which may involve comparing information from multiple
websites in order to assess whether the information they have obtained is
consistent. On the surface this process could appear to be quite demanding
in terms of the cognitive resources and time being deployed in order to
come to a final judgement. However, the researchers do note that for the
most part the cross-validation process is pretty superficial, with the
individual checking just a handful of alternative sources in an attempt to
verify the information as being credible (Metzger et al., 2010). The
consistency heuristic can also be seen to share a common root with the
others mentioned here, such as the endorsement, bandwagon and consensus
heuristic – they all operate under a similar mechanism whereby people will
believe things if other people do (Metzger et al., 2010).
The Expectancy Violation Heuristic
A large proportion of the participants in the study by Metzger et al. (2010)
noted that if a website violated their expectations in terms of the structural
elements (appearance, layout, features, functionality, comprehensiveness,
etc.) or in the informational content, then they would judge it as not
credible. According to Fogg’s work, such violations would be brought to
the prominence of the individual and could positively or negatively
influence the assessment of credibility for that information. One of the most
keenly discussed elements linked to the expectancy violation was linked to
a website’s appearance and functionality. Participants suggested that certain
website features or characteristics acted as critical determinants of
credibility, and where they were violated they also detracted from the
credibility of that site. These website features included things such as bad
grammar and typographical errors, which were flagged as good heuristic
indicators for determining the quality and therefore credibility of the
website. Both Fogg et al. (2003) and Flanagin and Metzger (2007) had
previously noted evidence to suggest that the design of the website often
plays a critical role in the individual’s assessment of that site’s credibility. It
would also appear to be the most simple to apply, meaning that the
individual is not committing a great deal of cognitive resources to the
assessment of credibility (Metzger et al., 2010).
Persuasive Intent Heuristic
The participants in the Metzger et al. (2010) study noted that anything that
served to intentionally persuade the individual to do something, such as
overt advertising or sales pitch, was seen as a major negative cue for
credibility judgements. Flanagin and Metzger (2000) had already noted that
the presence of commercial information on webpages caused users to view
such websites as less credible. In a similar vein Fogg et al. (2003) noted that
users took an almost instant dislike to a website that presented unsolicited
commercial information. It would appear that individuals don’t like to be
interrupted by advertisements or commercial content whilst they are
searching for information, and where it does exist it would appear to
produce an element of distrust on behalf of the individual, as they may
believe the information provider has an ulterior motive for presenting such
information. This process will in turn impact negatively on the perceived
credibility of that website. The types of adverts we explored in Chapter 4,
such as pop-up ads, appear to be the ones that are the most annoying, with
the element of intrusion being the critical motivator in creating lower
perceived credibility (Sundar, 2008).
How Information Is Presented Can Also Affect
Our Credibility Judgements
There has been some research that explores how the way in which
information is presented can actually hinder our capacity to make a
judgement about the credibility of information. For example, Alexander and
Tate (1999) presented some early research that suggested the concept of
‘channel convergence’ in the context of digital media. In traditional offline
media, individuals are presented with boundaries between information and
advertising content. One obvious way in which advertisers use this to their
best advantage is the use of ‘clickbait’ (see Figure 9.1). These are usually
sponsored links to external websites but are often presented within the main
body of the website and appear as real news stories. It is generally very easy
to spot an advert in a newspaper or magazine as opposed to the actual news
stories, but according to the notion of channel convergence, the split
between these two elements becomes blurred. For many websites, the
distinction between what is information and what is advertisement is often
very hard to discriminate, meaning that the end user may have greater
difficulty identifying the ‘real’ information on which to base a credibility
judgement. Burbules (1998) also noted that there is a tendency for
information that is presented in a similar style or format to be viewed as the
same. This concept of a psychological ‘levelling effect’ means that
information that is placed at the same level of accessibility within the web
environment is given the same level of attention and, hence, the same level
of credibility. As noted in the previous chapter, the inclusion of hyperlinks
and hypermedia can also present something of a challenge for users,
particularly in terms of their cognitive processing objectives. If you are
asking individuals to navigate from one webpage to another and retain
information in order for later evaluation, this will place an increased strain
on elements involved in executive function. Research by Eysenbach and
Kohler (2002) noted evidence for this, with both source and message
information becoming confused and scrambled in the memories of web
searchers in the period after they have conducted searches. This means that
in essence, the individual could be assigning credibility to information that
may have been commercial in nature and vice versa for actual information.
Figure 9.1 An example of ‘clickbait’ adverts taken from a website – these
will usually appear in the main body of the website and look like they
‘belong’ to other news stories that are posted alongside them
Summary
In the age of digital technology the way in which we view, consume and
assign trust to information is changing. Making judgements about the
credibility of information has become inherently harder for a variety of
reasons, predominantly related to the ease with which anyone, irrespective
of their expertise, can have a voice on the Internet. The legitimacy of
information in the online digital domain is no longer linked directly to the
evidence that is used to support it. Now the credibility of information is
associated with popularity, with social networking and viral advertising
campaigns seeding the basis for credibility in terms of hits or likes rather
than facts and figures. The lack of accepted protocols for regulating the
flow of information into the online domain means that we have lost one
way of preventing unreliable material being proliferated. This in turn means
that individuals are increasingly developing and deploying a set of
cognitive rules which have been specifically created to deal with such
material. As we have seen, such rules are far from perfect and can often be
influenced in ways that lead us to believe that information is credible when
indeed it is not.

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10 Search Strategies and Heuristics
Learning Aims and Objectives
To explore the key ways in which we navigate through
cyberspace when searching for information;
to understand how things such as physical presentation of
information affect the way in which we search for information;
to highlight instances where the framing of the question that acts
as the starting point for searching can actually influence the
search process;
to describe the use of ‘stop strategies’ used as mechanisms
preventing us from spending excessive time searching for
information online.
Overview
The Internet offers us a plethora of opportunities to search for information
on what could be a potentially limitless number of topics. In some instances
we are directed to search for specific information (goal-directed), such as
the time a particular shop opens, what size shoe Tom Hanks wears
(apparently a UK 11) and where all those odd socks go. However,
conspiracy theories aside, according to the latter there are other times when
we just search for the sake of searching (free browsing), and for which the
activity appears to be nothing more than a space-filler or leisure-time
activity. Marchionini (1999a, 1999b) suggested that the growth of digital
technology had accelerated the transformation of human society into an
information society. The concept of the information society is seen as one in
which information becomes one of the highest commodities, and pervades
economic, political and cultural activities (Karvalics, 2007). Therefore, in
order to survive and participate in the information society, an individual
needs to be able to adequately identify what information they need from the
multitude of sources that are available to them. These skills are captured
under the concept of information literacy (also referred to as information
problem solving; see Eisenberg and Berkowitz, 1990) and include our
capacity to locate, analyse and synthesise information from a variety of
sources (Marchionini, 1999a, 1999b). According to a number of
researchers, information problem solving is a skill that places a high
demand on the cognitive resources of the individual (Brand-Gruwel et al.,
2005; Walraven et al., 2009). Also, as information problem solving is a
skill, we must learn to utilise and perfect what can be seen as a complex set
of activities that can take some time to master (Brand-Gruwel et al., 2005).
Some research appeared in the early days of the Internet to explore the
actual cognitive processes that people use when searching for information
on the Internet. The research itself is, for the most part, still very much in its
infancy and there remain a great number of things we still don’t know about
the cognitive processes that underlie the search processes people engage in
online. However, the research focusing on decision-making and information
retrieval in the digital environment has noted a distinct difference between
those processes being used in an offline context and those being used
online. Early research from Jansen et al. (1998) highlighted that the process
of collecting information online is seen as being distinct from traditional
offline information retrieval.
How Do Information Seekers Use the Web?
White and Iivonen (2001) presented a series of key findings from research
that give us an initial starting point to understand how the individual uses
the Internet to search for information:
1. Users navigate cyberspace in a similar way to physical space: In the
context of their online searches, individuals create cognitive maps that
bear some resemblance to the physical maps we may use to help us
navigate in the physical environment. Some web users will often return
to their home page or repeatedly use the back button in order to restart
the search process. This process has been symptomatic of the
individual experiencing feelings of getting ‘lost’ in their searches of
cyberspace (Fidel et al., 1999; Palmquist and Kim, 2000;White and
Iivonen, 2001). Early findings from research also noted that users will
often start as well as revisit known sites multiple times throughout the
search process (Wang and Tenopir, 1998).
2. Users will browse for information: White and Iivonen (2001)
suggested that information searchers often use a browsing strategy to
satisfy their search for information. Our traditional view of ‘browsing’
may appear to be random in nature, but in some instances it can be
guided through not just the information needs of the searcher but also
the support offered by webpages. This support could be in the form of
suggestion for alternative webpages or perhaps following hypertext
links to alternative sources of information (White and Iivonen, 2001).
 They also suggested previous research that has shown many users will
restrict the scope of their searches and often choose to conduct
searches in small domain areas with frequent use of backtracking
(Catledge and Pitkow, 1995). Such a process could be seen as being
critical in the use of cognitive resources, with restrictions being placed
on the scope and depth of searches preventing individuals from
entering into negative equity. Fidel et al. (1999) noted that individuals
are fast and flexible in their searches, and decisions about which link
to follow next are made quickly. White and Iivonen also suggest that
the actual pattern of browsing will change depending on the length of
the search path as well as the information the individual needs to get
from that particular search. This would also suggest that information
seekers can modify their search patterns on an ad hoc basis depending
on how long they have been searching and also on what the main goal
of that search might be.
3. Reliance on the use of search engines: A variety of researchers have
noted that end users will place a heavy reliance on the use of search
engines as a major problem-solving strategy in the context of
information retrieval on the Internet. Indeed, the term ‘Googlitis’ has
entered into common language in order to describe what many see as
an over-reliance on search engines such as Google (Leibiger, 2011).
According to Leibiger (2011), individuals opting to use search engines
do so even when better search facilities exist for them to use. For
example, citing the work of Griffiths and Brophy (2005), Leibiger
noted that 76 per cent of the students in this study used library services
to connect directly to the Internet-based search engines rather than
using the library resources themselves. Just a small number (10 per
cent) actually used information contained in the library catalogue to
provide them with the relevant information that they needed. It was
also noted that many users display loyalty to a specific search engine
and will use these irrespective of better, more effective alternatives
(Hawk and Wang, 1999; Veloutsou and McAlonan, 2012). Users will
typically be seen to start searches with a search engine, and the general
success in the search or the proficiency in web search has been directly
related to the skills of the individual user in the utilisation of the web-
based search engine (Lazonder, 2000; Lazonder et al., 2000). However,
there is a trade-off between the user’s perception of the amount of
 material they are finding via the use of these search engines and the
actual information they are obtaining; most users overestimate the
breadth of the material they have found (White and Iivonen, 2001).
4. Users prefer simple search statements and do not plan searches:
Whilst most users will opt for the strategy of using a search engine to
obtain information, this does not necessarily equate to their most
efficient use. In most instances the interactivity that is presented by
interfaces on the Internet means that most users believe that they do
not have to plan a search strategy prior to engaging in them (Fidel et
al., 1999). Most web users will employ very few query terms when
using a search engine, comparatively lower than those used in more
traditional offline information searches (Jansen et al., 2000). Users also
avoid the use of complex search statements or engage in the use of
Boolean logic-based operators (AND, OR, NOT), which are often seen
as being cognitively demanding for the majority of web users
(Eysenbach et al., 2016; Jansen and Pooch, 2001; Jansen et al., 2000).
Users also typically ignore feedback information from search results
that will present associated search terms or possible results that could
be of interest (Jansen et al., 2000). Another interesting point is that
users readily modify query statements and will easily give up older
ones so that they can adopted newer options (Wang and Tenopir,
1998).
5. Web searchers don’t always get it right: Searching for information and
actually succeeding can vary from person to person, usually attributed
to the many variables involved in the search process. For instance, we
have the interaction between the search system itself and individual
differences, as well as differences in the actual mechanisms offered by
search engines for information search. In the same regard the cognitive
or learning style of the individual will also shape searching, as well as
differences between novice and more experienced users (Huang, 2014;
Palmquist and Kim, 2000). More able users are better at recalling and
finding correct website addresses, but compared with their less
experienced counterparts are no more likely to find information they
require once they do find the relevant website (Lazonder et al., 2000).
However, later research by Brand-Gruwel et al. (2005) noted that both
novice and expert searchers used a similar list-link strategy for
exploring information. They did, however, point out that expert web
 searchers spent more time defining the problem related to their search
for information in the preliminary stages, perhaps to tap into relevant
past experiences (Brand-Gruwel et al., 2005).
6. Users ‘believe’ in the ‘web’: It may not be surprising, but according to
White and Iivonen (2001) information searchers place a great deal of
trust in the information they glean from the Internet. This is viewed in
the context maps very neatly onto the discussion in the previous
chapter surrounding the credibility of information on the Internet and
the lack of measures to protect the individual from incorrect
information. Scull et al. (1999) had already noted that both expert and
novice information searchers placed a great deal of credibility on
information found on the web. Moreover, and perhaps more worrying,
is the research by Wang and Tenopir (1998) that indicated that users
are generally convinced they have found the correct information even
though it is not. Similar findings have also been reported by
researchers looking at the use of digital technology in education, with
Graham and Metaxas (2003) noting that students have limited critical
awareness when it comes to information provided on the Internet.
How Does the Presentation of Information Affect
Search Strategy?
An important aspect of searching for information on the Internet relates to
how individuals identify and select links on webpages, and how their
relevance to the current task influences such decisions. Brumby and Howes
(2008) initially suggested that the relevance of labels attached to a link
could have a direct impact on the user’s choice to select that link. In their
work they sought to explore how task, relevance of the link label, and
strategies individuals use influence decisions about which links to follow.
Brumby and Howes’ (2008) work was based partially on research
conducted by Katz and Byrne (2003) as well as being linked into a concept
termed ‘information scent’ (Pirolli, 2005). Now, it might sound a little bit
weird to think about information as having a particular smell. However it
appears that when we search for information we can elicit details about
where it is located based on the design or labelling of links which in turn
gives off a ‘scent’. The better the information scent of a website, the easier
it will be for individuals to find and locate relevant information. Katz and
Byrne (2003) presented two studies that showed that the decision to either
use a generic search function or use a drop-down menu relied on an
interplay between the individual and the website. It was assumed that
individuals would choose the search option as this is seen as a faster and
more direct route to finding the information that they wanted, but Katz and
Byrne (2003) found no evidence that using the search function was faster. It
would appear that the participants in their study were not fazed by the
potential broadness and depth of the menus presented to them on the test
websites used, but only when the information they were looking for was
directly evident. The decision as to which option to choose was influenced
directly by the information scent of the menu items being presented – for
example, if there was a greater match between the thing that the individual
was searching for and where it was located in the menus, individuals would
more likely use the menu function.
Of key interest for the work of Brumby and Howes (2008) was the follow-
on to this work. Essentially they wanted to explore how easy it was for
users to discriminate between items that had a direct relevance to the
current goal in hand and those aspects that have a high degree of semantic
attraction but are not task relevant. There is a possibility that individuals
could select more task-irrelevant links, leading to the potential for lost time
and the prospect that the required information may never be found. In
Brumby and Howes’ study they presented a position that contrasted slightly
with existing literature in the area. Instead of assuming a more heuristic-
based strategy, individuals were seen to employ a more rational and
systematic approach. First, individuals were more likely to select an item
that presented a high level of information only if other potentially
distracting links on the page were less relevant. In addition, where the
irrelevant items shared a high degree of similarity with the task-relevant
ones, individuals were less likely to select the relevant link on the first visit
to the webpage. This process suggested that individuals delayed a decision
about the relevance of particular links in order to make a more detailed
assessment of all links presented. This contrasts directly with a more
heuristic approach that would suggest fewer items would be selected in an
attempt to reduce cognitive load (Brumby and Howes, 2008). The authors
do note that this may be only relevant when individuals are encountering
new webpages or new information that could be later incorporated in
further heuristic strategies.
How Does the Question We Are Asked Impact on
Search Strategy?
White and Iivonen (2001) suggested that there is an important link between
the nature of the question being asked of the web user and respective
predictions about where this information will be found. Rouet (2003) also
noted that when students were asked specific questions they were fast and
precise in terms of their searching behaviour with few references back to
the question. In contrast, when the question was broader and more
ambiguous students took longer to conduct searches and referred back to
the question more. White and Iivonen (2001) presented participants with a
combination of open and closed-ended questions; closed-answer questions
required the user to provide an exact answer with no further input, whereas
open-ended questions presented the need for a less direct answer, with a
further need for developing an appropriate response. In terms of
predictability, a searcher will look for relevant sources where they study and
combine this information dependent on its relevance. In some instances the
searcher will know an exact website where they can obtain relevant
material, which indicates a high level of predictability for the source of the
information. In contrast, other questions will require the individual to
process the information so that they need to engage in a more extensive
search, and the actual location of the answer will not be evident. In the
instance of the latter, the individual may have to develop a response to the
question based on various sources and developing relevant links to related
sites. This aspect is associated directly to the use of heuristic strategies,
where the individual has to distribute their resources economically with due
consideration to the nature of the question, the importance of the
information required and the enormity of the information domain itself.
The study conducted by White and Iivonen (2001) explored the effect of
question framing and the way in which this impacts on the initial decision
for where to begin the search. In terms of the overall initial stages in the
information search, it was noted that participants relied heavily on the use
of search engines (43 per cent), followed by the entry of the direct web
address (30 per cent) and then directory access or subject directories (such
as Online Public Access Catalogues or OPACs; 27 per cent). In further
analysis the results showed that for both manipulations of the predictability
of the information source there was a predominant use of the direct web
address entry strategy to begin the search process. In the instance of the
unpredictability of sources, participants are more likely to use a search
engine to initiate the initial web search, linked directly to the uncertainty of
the location for information.
The work by White and Iivonen is also important as it provides an attempt
to classify the reasons provided by participants for their initial choices in
their search strategies:
1. Question-related reasons: These are related directly to the nature of the
question and highlight that the choice by the user is motivated by an
attempt to clarify the parameters of the search itself. Here the user may
attempt to define some aspects of the question or assess terms in the
question and extend these into specific search terms.
2. Source-related reasons: This relates directly to the quality of the initial
source information and includes aspects of certainty (whether the
website will contain information related to the web search), the
presence of multiple links from which to extend the search and the
reliability of the particular source (in terms of how correct it may be).
3. Search-strategy-related reasons: This refers to the actual search
process that the end user initiates, and introduces notions of
‘browsability’; individuals unable to form tangible searches based on
the question’s wording instead adopt a strategy of browsing.
In instances where the source of material relevant to answer the question is
predictable in nature, individuals are predominantly seen to be placing an
emphasis on source-related reasons for making such decisions. This is
assumed to be symptomatic of the link between the accessibility of the
‘known’ information and previous knowledge that suggests to the user a
previous source that could provide the information they require. In contrast
for users faced with an unpredictability of information source there is an
emphasis on search-strategy-related reasons for making initial search
choices (White and Iivonen, 2001). Individuals are actively identifying the
best pathway for conducting the information search based on how well the
search itself can evolve. Such a notion of evolution fits in directly with the
aspect of uncertainty related to where the material to answer the question
could be found rather than where it will be found. Such a choice represents
the capability of users to modify or change options whilst being able to
collect the widest possible selection of sources.
The research by White and Iivonen (2001) presented users as sophisticated
decision-makers on the Internet, with the initial move in the search shaping
the evolving structure of the continuing search. Here web users are actively
engaged in complex forms of information processing, with forward
planning for the entire search process being a more systematic approach
rather than that of a heuristic-based strategy. The initial step in the search
strategy is based directly on the parameters that are outlined in the initial
search question, with users presenting reasons for initial search decisions
based on an analysis of these parameters. This is clearly a contrast to the
generally held view that searchers are conducting information retrieval that
is fairly simplistic in nature and lacks cognitive complexity. A clear
mediating factor in the choice for the initial search strategy is linked to how
predictable the source of the answer to the initial search query will be.
White and Iivonen (2001) highlight some clear implications for this
research that are worthy of discussion in the current context. Clearly, there
is an impact of question type and question framing on the way in which
individuals not only begin their search, but also shapes the whole search
process. In this regard, where users are expected to present findings from
information retrieval based in the Internet, there is a need to explore the
way in which questions are framed, and a suggestion that further research is
needed into the overall effect question framing has on the wider search
process. There is also an aspect of education and skill development that
could be extended to providing users with a series of strengths and
weaknesses that could be associated directly with the choice of initial
search strategies. Further manipulations of the framing of the question
according to complexity, number of stages required in the search process
and domain of the search question could also be manipulated to form the
basis of future research. This would allow an aggregate picture of how users
process information to highlight the best mechanism for searching, and also
allow researchers to ‘map’ question parameters onto the actual shape of the
search processes being engaged in.
Heuristics Used in Stopping Search Processes
From the literature reviewed above there is the consistent view that the
cognitive resources an individual brings to bear on any given task are
limited in nature. Any search that requires analysis of information space,
the planning of associated strategies and then conducting the search is seen
as mentally effortful (Browne et al., 2007). In this regard it is a waste for
the user to expend resources in searches that will yield little or no
information at a point of diminishing returns, so research has suggested that
individuals need and use mechanisms for stopping the information search
process. As Browne et al. (2007) noted, little research has been done, not
only on the nature of heuristics in an online context as a whole, but also
related directly to the possible stop strategies people are using in
information searches. Such processes are seen as being distinct from those
that are used in an offline context as the information space presented by the
Internet differs along a number of dimensions. These relate directly to the
size of the information space that is presented alongside the speed at which
such information can be accessed and analysed, with the former being
larger and infinite and the latter being faster and more instantaneous.
In general the individual user will terminate the search process once they
have assessed the information they have collected and judged it to be
sufficient for fulfilling the requirements they have for that particular search.
This process then allows the user to move onto the next stage in the search
process, so the individual must invoke a stopping rule so that they are not
continually trapped in the initial stages of the search (Browne et al., 2007).
From a ‘normative’ view of how it is expected users would invoke such
stopping rules, individuals will continue to look for information until they
reach a point where the mental cost of acquiring new information exceeds
the worth of the prospective information that will be obtained from
continuing the search (2007). There is also another associated cost, and that
is the trade-off in terms of stopping the search behaviour and the ‘expected’
value of any additional material that could be found after the process has
been stopped. However, this presented a very much perfect view of the way
in which individuals would stop their search processes, and Browne et al.
(2007) noted that end users are not logical in assessing the cost of
continuing a search in the light of the additional material they are finding,
with most implementing the use of heuristic strategies to satisfy this
shortfall.
The literature presented an offline distinction between motivational and
cognitive aspects of stopping rules:
1. Motivational: These relate directly to the preferences, desires and
incentives (both internal and external, e.g. deadlines, costs,
professional respect).
 2. Cognitive: These are a result of the individual processes a user will
bring to bear on the information itself and relate directly to the notion
of a ‘mental model’ they have when they are developing the outline for
the information search. This will include previous information related
to the task and the task environment itself (Browne et al., 2007).
Although it is clear that motivational aspects can have a direct impact on
the use of stop strategies, the focus for the current discussion relates directly
to those of a cognitive nature. Cognitive stopping rules have been explored
according to how they are implemented and how different types are used in
stages of the decision-making process (Browne et al., 2007). In the early
stages of the information search users are seen to be creating a model of the
alternative routes that could be generated as a result of initial decisions. In
this instance the use of stopping rules prevents the collection of any
additional information so that the user can take stock of the material
collected so far. The use of the stopping rule here has a feedback role,
where the user will highlight the usefulness of current material collected
against the current task parameters. In the later stages of decision-making,
the use of stopping rules prevents the searcher from continuing in a cycle of
evaluating between distinct alternatives (2007). This has an obviously
mediating impact on the amount of cognitive resources being used, but does
limit the amount of useful material that could be collected by the individual
search.
Browne et al. (2007) suggested five key cognitive stopping rules that are
presented in Table 10.1.
In order to develop a framework for understanding the use of cognitive
stopping rules in online searches Browne et al. (2007) developed research
that explored two key aspects in the process. The first one relates to task
structure and the second to the overall strategy being used:
Source: Browne et al. (2007: 92)
1. Task structure: Essentially this makes reference to the overall ‘shape’
of the task itself and how much of the task is familiar to the searcher
 (Byström and Järvelin, 1995). In the instance of a well-structured task
there is a well-defined shape to the task environment. The user is
aware of the problem statement, what is needed in order to provide a
solution and what is needed in terms of the final answer. In direct
contrast, the notion of a poorly defined problem has limited
information related to all of the previously highlighted aspects,
particularly in relation to what the individual can do or needs to do en
route to find an end point for process.
2. Strategy used: This is seen as how the individual approaches the actual
nature of the problem. It can be further divided into two distinct
strategies according to the way in which the user analyses the problem.
In the use of a decomposition strategy, the user essentially pulls apart
the problem allowing it to be ‘decomposed’ into its individual
constituent parts. This could include an interpretation of task elements
(related to task domain) and the criteria for the search (what needs to
be found). In contrast, a holistic strategy provides a more integrated
and overall representation of the task, providing a general ‘gist’ of the
problem environment (Browne et al., 2007).
According to research reviewed by Browne et al. (2007) both the
complexity of the task and the experience of the user can influence the
adoption of the above strategies. The notion of complexity in the context of
web-based searching has its foundations in the expenditure of cognitive
resources, where increased deployment of these indicates a higher
perceived complexity of the task (Vakkari, 1998, 1999). In the instance
where the information-processing capabilities are overwhelmed by the
needs of the task then there is a performance breakdown with users
suffering from reduced mental focus (Grisé and Gallupe, 1999),
demonstrated more so in the context of online environments (Miranda and
Saunders, 2003). There is a residual knock-on effect of this that relates
directly to the capability of the user to devote resources to identifying
individual components of the task. In high load conditions, there will a
reduced likelihood of adopting a decomposition strategy. As Browne et al.
(2007) noted, such a notion highlights a link between the capabilities of the
individual (in terms of individual differences and processing abilities) and
the complexity of the task in the ability to adopt a particular strategy, which
then in turn serves to influence the use of particular stop strategies.
Results from Browne et al. (2007) highlighted that task complexity and task
structure influence the stopping heuristics in information search. When we
have a decent structure to the problem, where there is the ability to pull that
problem apart into its individual elements and the complexity of the task is
low, individuals are more likely to use mental lists and single criterion
strategies. This is assumed to link to the ability of the individual to
highlight individual aspects of the task environment. In contrast, where
tasks are poorly defined and are of higher overall complexity, the search is
terminated through the use of magnitude threshold or representational
stability rules that represent the evolving strategies that are symptomatic of
such a process.
Such research not only highlights the limited scope of empirical research in
this area, with these two papers being the only ones being returned in a
search on the area, but also presents some interesting foundations for future
research. There is a clear demonstration that individuals are not only using
heuristics in an attempt to limit online information searching, but also that
there are a variety of options they have open to them. However, the research
is very much a post hoc discussion of the strategies that are being used in
the context of online information searching, with no real way of predicting
how and why individuals will adopt such strategies apart from a notion that
complexity will have an impact. The notion of task complexity and
previous task knowledge serve as a basis for this, and link back again to
individuals as information processors with limited resources who have to
use the most cost-effective strategy. However, there is no associated
discussion in the research literature of the associated trade-off between the
prospective cost of the individual stopping such a search and how this
impacts on future searches. If individuals are ceasing information-gathering
activities prematurely, there must be a residual impact on how this cessation
in the search process affects the development of more finely tuned and
refined stop strategies, with the wealth of information presented on the
Internet perhaps leading individuals to believe they have attained more
information than they actually have done in reality.
Stop strategies are obvious mechanisms that are being used in online
information- seeking activities. A deeper analysis of the interaction of these
with website choices that individuals are making could highlight why
particular websites are more favoured and retain more users. If, for
instance, a website provides the user with all the information that they
require to fulfil a mental list or single criterion-based stop strategy, then
clearly the user is going to opt for this website over all others. As
highlighted by Browne et al. (2007), there is a need for further research in
this area, and as with much of the literature most of it is very dated and does
not take into account more recent developments in hypermedia and web-
based decision-making, particularly in the context of social media. There is
a need to explore how individuals structure and prioritise aspects of their
mental lists or determine the nature of the single criterion and how these fit
into the underlying information-processing strategies governing search and
stop procedures. The research by Browne et al. (2007) placed a distinct
emphasis on exploring the use of these strategies in the context of online
shopping and e-commerce, but there are a variety of further avenues this
could be applied to. For instance, there is an aspect of online searching that
has not been answered directly by this research related to why searchers
‘make do’ with the information they find. Subsequently this may also
impact on the individual’s assessment of the material they have obtained,
but more importantly what material is missed or not encountered in their
search. Aspects of stop strategies may terminate a search prematurely, with
further research needed to examine how these processes link to previous
experience, cognitive styles as well as the structure of the websites.
Previous Experience Effects Decision-Making
Online
Again there is a symptomatic lack of literature that explores the effects of
the individual’s previous experience in terms of how the strategies are
biased. The literature in terms of traditional decision-making presents a
clear notion that individuals are easily swayed towards a particular choice
based on information contained in memory and life experiences. In the only
research of this nature found during my review of the literature, Lau and
Coiera (2007) explored the effects of cognitive biases on decision-making
processes. They explored four key biases:
1. Anchoring effect: This occurs when a prior belief exerts a direct
influence on how new information is processed. Where information is
in direct opposition to the existing information, individuals are far
more likely to reject this and stick to their original view or assertion.
2. Order effect: The temporal order of when information is introduced
affects the final judgement. This follows a common pattern from the
 literature in cognitive psychology known as the primacy/recency
effect. In the context of primacy, events occurring temporally closer to
the beginning of the sequence are better remembered, and therefore
have a more direct influence on decision-making. In contrast, the
notion of recency refers to the effect temporally recent items will have
on decision-making. A variety of studies have demonstrated that
individuals can make different decisions when presented with the same
information at different positions in a sequence (Cromwell, 1950;
Luchins, 1957)
3. Exposure effect: The level of exposure to information serves to affect
the final judgement. The duration of exposure, the spread of
experiences over time and the time between presentation episodes all
have a direct influence on an individual’s impression formation, and
therefore bias decision-making.
4. Reinforcement effect: Repeated exposure to information can influence
the way in which beliefs and decisions are formed. Increased exposure
to a stimulus is correlated with an enhanced attitude towards that
stimulus, an effect that is demonstrated regardless of the stimulus type
itself.
Lau and Coiera (2007) presented support for the use of all four cognitive
biases in an information-seeking activity conducted online. Individuals
were more likely to retain a pre-search answer even when newer and correct
information was presented. Individuals were fulfilling the anchoring bias,
being more resilient to changing their initial preconceptions or beliefs even
in the light of information that suggested this information may be incorrect.
There was also an influence of item position on the nature of the decision-
making, with material being presented either earlier on in the search process
or later having a direct impact on the answers presented by individuals. The
effect of exposure to a particular stimulus was also apparent, with the
amount of time spent on a particular webpage influencing the degree of
concurrency between the answers presented by the individual and the
information presented on the website. Finally, the reinforcement effect was
also evident, where an increase in the frequency of accessing a particular
document or website again influenced the concurrency between
participants’ post-search answers and those presented on that particular
website.
Overall these results present interesting, although somewhat limited
findings. The authors highlight the point that the measures used in the
research may not have been sensitive enough to measure the underlying
phenomenon. There is also no further exploration of how the four biases
outlined above interact to influence decision-making online, and if they do,
whether such an effect is cumulative in nature or whether one bias serves to
override the presence of the other one. This research is, however, presented
in isolation as the only study of its type exploring the effects of cognitive
biases in online decision-making. There are nonetheless other biases that
could be explored, and it is clear that there are many other ways in which
this material could be explored.
Summary
As you can see from the research reviewed here, searching for information
on the Internet isn’t simply a case of banging in a random query to Google.
The processes that are involved in our attempts to find material that is
relevant to our needs without expending excessive amounts of those
valuable cognitive resources. From the research explored above we begin to
see a picture of how individuals engage in web-based searching for
information. We see that they utilise a number of mechanisms that are very
similar to those being used to navigate around the physical environment.
Individuals also have a tendency to browse for information in more targeted
ways when searching online. This more restrictive browsing in turn also
allows for the conservation of valuable cognitive resources that can then be
devoted to other elements of the task. People also rely very heavily on
search engines to help them find information and often fail to understand
these might not be returning the full results. Planning web searching
appears to be non-existent for the most part, with users being more ad hoc
in their approaches, often using very simplified one- or two- word search
terms. Furthermore, the way in which material is presented, as well as the
question that is asked of the individual, can also be seen to have a direct
impact on the way in which we search for information. We do not search for
information in an isolated bubble that is protected from our previous
interactions and experiences with the Internet, and it is these very
experiences that can enhance or bias our capacity to search for information.

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11 Technology Addictions and Cognition
Learning Objectives
To explore the concept of technology addiction and present an
overview of the literature in the area;
to introduce some key addictions to technology and examine
how they can impact on human cognition;
to highlight some of the key issues inherent in using broad labels
for technology addictions.
Digital Addictions and the Impact on Human
Cognition
One key area of research that is featured heavily in the cyberpsychology
literature is the potential for individuals to become addicted to digital
technology. The important question we need to start to ask ourselves is if
we do become addicted, how does this addiction start to affect our capacity
to focus on normal daily activities? There has been some discussion of
aspects of technology addiction in other chapters of this book, with some
links to the residual impact these behaviours may have on cognition.
However, research that specifically focuses on evidence for addiction to
digital technology and how such disorders could have an impact on our
daily functioning is limited (Hadlington, 2015). In this chapter the aim is to
present a very broad overview of the current state of research in the area of
technology addiction. Throughout the chapter the links between these
behavioural addictions and the potential impact on cognition will be
established, reviewing some of the material that has already been discussed
in other chapters of the book. Hopefully, you will see that there is a distinct
gap in the literature in this area, and it presents great potential for further
research.
The Emergency of Behavioural Addictions
Previous conceptualisations of addictions have focused, for the most part,
on substance abuse for things such as drugs and alcohol (Griffiths, 1998).
These addictions involve the direct action of ingesting something that alters
our experiences via a chemical process. However, in the 1990s a growing
area of research suggested that individuals could equally become addicted
to activities without the direct need to ingest drugs (Brown, 1993; Griffiths,
1996, 1998). Previous research has highlighted a number of these
behavioural addictions including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),
compulsive spending and gambling, overeating and kleptomania to name
just a few (Marks, 1990). What is apparent from the earlier work on
behavioural addiction is that there is some considerable overlap to that of
substance addiction. For example a ‘repeated urge to engage in a particular
behaviour sequence that is counterproductive’ and ‘mounting tension until
the sequence is completed’ could easily fit into any number of behavioural
addictions, but which are included in the World Health Organization’s
definition of substance addiction (Marks, 1990).
Brown (1993, 1997) outlined a four-point checklist, later adopted by
Griffiths (1996), which can be used to identify whether a particular
behaviour falls into the category of an addiction:
1. Salience: This is where the activity that is the focus of the addiction
becomes the most important activity for the individual; in this instance
that activity will be seen to dominate aspects of thought, emotion and
behaviour.
2. Mood modification: This relates to the subjective experience the
individual has as a result of engaging in the activity that is the focus of
the addiction – this element links directly to the reported feelings of
elation or ‘high’ that individuals may experience (Griffiths, 1998,
2010).
3. Tolerance: An individual must engage in increasing levels of
engagement in the particular activity in order to experience the same
level of gratification as before; so this might be increasing the amount
of time spent on the Internet or increasing the amount of money being
spent on clothes.
4. Symptoms of withdrawal: In the absence of doing the activity that is
the focus of the addiction, or attempting to cut down on the activity,
the individual will experience unpleasant feelings such as mood
swings, irritability and anxiety.
In the context of this chapter, the behavioural addictions we will focus on
are those that fall under the heading of technology addictions (Griffiths,
1996, 1998). This broad term is used to cover a variety of addictions that
have a technology-enabled element, and can include (but are not limited to)
online gaming the Internet, smartphone/mobile phone, pornography, online
shopping, social networking and email. For our current discussion the focus
will fall mainly on aspects that have received the most attention from
research, namely the Internet, social networking sites and
smartphone/mobile phone addiction.
Mobile Phone and Smartphone Addiction
In recent findings from the Pew Research Centre (Lenhart and Page, 2015)
it was noted that 24 per cent of US teens aged between 13 and 17 were
classified as being online ‘almost constantly’. This phenomenon was
partially attributed to the availability of mobile technology, with 70 per cent
of teenagers in the study having access to smartphone technology. Those
teens that have no mobile access to the Internet are online less frequently,
with 68 per cent reporting being online at least daily in comparison with 94
per cent of those who have access to mobile technology such as
smartphones. The OfCom (2015) report noted that smartphone users,
irrespective of age group, now spend an average of two hours accessing the
Internet on these devices. The same report also noted that smartphones are
now the most widely owned Internet-enabled device in advance of laptops,
with smartphones present in 66 per cent of UK households. There has been
a substantial shift in the way individuals are now accessing digital media,
including the Internet, hence the importance of exploring how excessive use
is impacting on the end user. The additional functionality that the
smartphone platform offers also means there is a greater propensity for
instantaneous gratification and connectivity, which in turn could mean a
higher potential for individuals to become addicted to their use. Thornton et
al. (2014) suggested that when aspects of ‘cognitive salience’, where the
smartphone becomes the dominant feature of their thoughts or focus of
attention, are paired with ‘behavioural salience’, in which there is a constant
need to check the smartphone for messages and alerts, we have the primary
symptoms of a behavioural addiction. Thornton et al. (2014) noted that
simply the presence of a smartphone device during tasks was enough to
affect performance. It was noted that this effect only occurred for more
complex activities, potentially due to greater demands being placed on
attentional resources, but importantly this decrement was due to the phone
simply being in the same space as the individual!
Prior to the rise and dominance of the smartphone some researchers had
begun to explore aspects of problematic mobile phone use. For the purposes
of our current discussion, let us make the assumption that the key difference
between mobile phones and smartphones is that of functionality – the
predominant factor being that of connectivity. For the most part, mobile
phones were simply a tool for sending text messages (SMS) and making
voice calls, with some later models having rudimentary browsers allowing
individuals the capacity to search for information. The smartphone takes
this connectivity one step further, and offers the users a wider variety of
pathways to explore all in one handset, including the Internet, online
shopping, dedicated applications for fitness, teaching, learning and so on.
The rapid rise in the use of mobile phones in the early years of the 2000s
was not associated with a similar rise in the amount of research being
conducted to explore their use (excessive or otherwise) on aspects of human
cognition. Much of the earlier research had a tendency to focus on the
social elements associated with mobile phone use, including when and
where they were used and how individuals were seen to obtain gratification
from their use (e.g. Leung and Wei, 2000).
Further work by Bianchi and Phillips (2005) explored the potential for a
link between excessive (or problematic) mobile phone use and a variety of
psychological constructs. The research employed the use of the Mobile
Phone Problematic Use Scale (MPPUS) that included 27 items such as ‘I
lose sleep due to the time I spend on my mobile phone’, ‘I can never spend
enough time on my mobile phone’ and ‘I have frequent dreams about the
mobile phone’. Elements of the MPPUS tie in directly to underlying
elements of cognition, including aspects of distraction alongside an inability
to focus or concentrate. The research paired the MPPUS with a variety of
other measures, including one that explored the psychological construct of
self-esteem and another that examined personality factors. Bianchi and
Philips (2005) found that those individuals who scored more highly on a
measure of extraversion and lower on measures of self-esteem were more
likely to report higher levels of problematic mobile phone use. In follow-up
research conducted by Ha et al. (2008) it was noted that excessive levels of
mobile phone use were linked directly to symptoms of depression, issues
with expressing emotions and higher levels of interpersonal anxiety (related
to being in social situations and meeting new people), as well as scoring
lower on measures of self-esteem. The latter point supports the earlier work
by Bianchi and Philips (2005), with lower levels of self-esteem previously
being linked to addictive behaviours (Ha et al., 2008).
However, this research solely focuses on the personality factors that predict
problematic mobile phone use, and there has been very little in the way of
research focusing on the impact excessive mobile phone use has on human
cognition. In order to fill this void, my own research has presented an
exploration of how problematic mobile phone use could indeed impact on
our capacity to focus attention on a daily basis. The research asked 210
participants to complete a series of measures, including the MPPUS
(Bianchi and Philips, 2005) discussed above, followed by a measure of
Internet addiction (the Online Cognition Scale ‒ OCS; see Davis et al.,
2002) and the Cognitive Failures in Daily Life Questionnaire (CFQ; see
Broadbent et al., 1982). The CFQ is an interesting scale that asks
participants to indicate whether they have experienced any ‘cognitive
failures’ in a preceding six-month period prior to the completion of the
study. These cognitive failures relate to lapses in both attention and
memory, and can include things such as not remembering names or
forgetting what you went into a room for. The results from the study were
both interesting and a little bit shocking, showing that those individuals
who scored more highly on the MPPUS experienced significantly more
cognitive failures in their daily life in comparison with those who scored
lower. It was not possible to conclude whether such failures were directly
the result of individuals being engaged on their mobile phone more, but it
did present one of the first findings linking the use of such devices to a
potential impact on human cognition. It could be that individuals who are
experiencing higher levels of mobile phone use are also easily distracted or
have a lower level of attentional control, hence are more likely to miss
things within their daily spheres of activity (Hadlington, 2015).
As with problematic mobile phone use, there is also a lack of research
exploring how excessive or addictive levels of smartphone use can impact
on aspects of cognition. There have been some attempts to map the impact
of smartphone addiction onto the well-being of individuals that could, as a
consequence, also have an impact on cognition. In one of the first studies
attempting to explore the factors and impacts underlying smartphone
addiction, Kwon et al. (2013) presented the Smartphone Addiction Scale
(SAS), which highlighted six key factors:
1. ‘Daily-life disturbances’ included elements such as missing work-
related activities, issues of focusing attention, physical stress and sleep
disturbance. This aspect of smartphone addiction links into the impact
on human cognition, and as we have seen in other chapters, issues
 related to focusing attention, physical stress and lack of sleep can all
have negative impacts on human cognition.
2. ‘Positive anticipation’ is viewed as the emotive component that is
linked to the excitement and sense of stress relief that is afforded to the
smartphone user. Kwon et al. (2013) suggested that the smartphone is
viewed not just as a device with which to make calls and send text
messages, but also aids the relief of exhaustion – plus being a point of
safety.
3. ‘Withdrawal’ is conceptualised as generalised feelings of anxiety or
intolerance due to being prevented from using a smartphone or being
interrupted whilst using the device.
4. ‘Cyberspace-orientated relationship’ is associated with feelings of
increased intimacy with relationships that are mediated through a
smartphone above that experienced in offline relationships. This is also
linked to a sense of loss when the individual is unable to connect with
their friends due to restricted access to their smartphone, which has
direct links to the phenomenon of fear of missing out (FoMO; see
Przybylski et al., 2013).
5. ‘Overuse’ is viewed as the element of compulsion attached to the
individual’s use of smartphone technology as it is associated with an
element of uncontrollability (Kwon et al., 2013).
6. ‘Tolerance’ was the final factor included in the scale produced by
Kwon et al. (2013). This element is typified by the user acknowledging
that they have an issue with excessive smartphone use and making an
attempt to curb it, but the end result is a failure to do so.
These factors presented by Kwon et al. (2013) also presented some cross-
over to those which are proposed to underlie the Internet addiction. These
aspects have included such things as the smartphone presenting a
mechanism for social comfort, the presence of compulsive behaviours (such
as the need to constantly check for messages), withdrawal from daily
activities and the negative impact of use on everyday activities (Young,
1999).
In later research, Lin et al. (2014) presented the development of the
Smartphone Addiction Inventory (SPAI), which was heavily based on the
Chinese Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS) originally developed by Chen et
al. (2003). The adapted SPAI essentially substituted the focus of the original
CIAS by replacing the word ‘Internet’ with that of ‘Smartphone’ and
making some other minor adjustments. The scale by Lin et al. (2014)
included four distinct factors:
1. Compulsive behaviour: According to Lin et al. (2014), this is a critical
element and has been seen at the core of a number of addictions
including alcohol dependence (Gau et al., 2005) and Internet addiction
(Lin and Gau, 2013). Neuropsychological studies have also noted that
those individuals who exhibit addictions also have deficits in the
activation of brain areas that are related to the inhibition of behaviour
(Lubman et al., 2004).
2. Functional impairment: This factor relates directly to physiological
symptoms of excessive use as well as impact on motivation and work-
related performance. This can include elements such as eye strain,
muscle fatigue and the individual experiencing actual injuries as a
result of their smartphone through a lack of attention, such as walking
into things or tripping over.
3. Withdrawal: This factor presents itself as both a lack of connectivity
and emotional loss and is experienced when individuals become
separated from their smartphones. This factor shares some similarities
to that of the ‘cyberspace orientated relationship’ included in the scale
by Kwon et al. (2013), as well as being closely linked to the concept of
FoMO.
4. Tolerance: Again, this is a feature of the smartphone scale as noted in
Kwon et al.’s original study. It was, however, noted by Liu et al.
(2014) that this factor was one of the more poorly represented ones
and warranted further expansion in later scales. This is presented as the
need for the individual to engage in ever increasing engagement with
their smartphones in order to maintain their current level of
gratification.
We spent some time looking at the excessive use of smartphones and its
potential to interfere with basic aspects of cognition when examining the
impact this has on education in Chapter 8. The findings from much of the
research in this area have suggested that there are clearly some negative
relationships between excessive levels of smartphone use and overall
educational attainment (Judd, 2014; Junco and Cotten, 2012; Rosen et al.,
2013). Some have seen the link between poor educational attainment and
excessive smartphone use as one based on diverted attention and the
increased load on already stretched cognitive resources (Mayer and
Moreno, 2003). Others have surmised that problematic smartphone use
actively blocks cognitive resources that are essential for learning to take
place successfully (Hawi and Samaha, 2016; Samaha and Hawi, 2016).
Finally, the other way in which smartphones can impact on our capacity to
learn is their capacity to distract and disrupt within the context of any
learning environment. In order for anything to be learned, engagement in
the subject matter is essential if the necessary memory traces are to be laid
down correctly. If there is a sudden shift in attention from the academic to
the non-academic (e.g. checking Pinterest on their smartphones) then there
is going to be a decrement in the amount of information that will be
retained (Just et al., 2001). Obviously when we enter into the level of
problematic or addicted levels of use, these issues are simply going to be
exacerbated further, hence the need to clearly identify how learning is
affected in a more systematic way.
In an unpublished study designed as a follow-on from the research
conducted on mobile phone use I changed the focus away from mobile
phone use and instead looked at smartphone use and cognitive failures. The
findings from the study that used an adapted version of the SPAI produced
by Lin et al. (2014) again noted a significant correlation between levels of
smartphone addiction and cognitive failures in daily life. The results from
this research appeared to show that current developments in smartphone
technology are also linked to the levels of cognitive failures individuals are
experiencing in their daily lives. Again, as before, the conclusion from this
research cannot be causative in nature – we cannot say with certainty that
addiction to smartphones leads to an increase in cognitive failures, as there
is no prior measure from which to make a comparison. If we had a group of
participants who had never been subjected to smartphone technology, and
asked them to start to use said technology, we may be able to make this
link. However, trying to find such a group in today’s modern society is
something of a challenge, so the conclusions we can make from this
research are pretty speculative in nature. Excessive levels of both mobile
phone and smartphone use are linked to significantly higher levels of
cognitive failures. Building on evidence from previous research, it is
suggested that those individuals who find themselves engaged in excessive
levels of smartphone use have limited working memory capacity and also
poorer attentional control (Kane et al., 2007; Ophir et al., 2009; Unsworth
et al., 2012). Unsworth et al. (2012) noted that individuals who had poorer
attentional control suffered from an inability to prevent a spontaneous shift
towards task-irrelevant information. As attentional control is linked to
working memory capacity, the logic here would suggest that issues with
working memory in turn lead to a deficit in attentional control. In terms of
those who are addicted to the use of smartphones, the capacity to be
distracted and engage in activities on the smartphone, and not pay attention
to elements within their daily sphere of activity, would provide a neat
explanation for the rise in experiencing increased levels of cognitive errors.
However, as detailed before, such a notion is purely conjectural in nature
and we really need to get more research conducted in this area in order for
us to understand the process involved in these findings.
Internet Addiction
The fundamentals of Internet addiction and the plethora of research that has
been conducted in this area would take an entire book rather than part of a
chapter to discuss. For now we are going to be focusing directly on the
impact Internet addiction (whether it exists or not) has upon the individual
and, in turn, human cognition. For those of you wishing to explore the
literature on Internet addiction further I will include some at the end of the
chapter. For the most part, the research exploring the psychological impact
of Internet addiction has focused predominantly on aspects of social
functioning and well-being (see Kuss et al., 2013, for an excellent review of
this research). What remains is a gap, and that gap is the exploration of how
excessive use of the Internet impacts on aspects of human cognition.
Internet addiction, as we have seen with smartphone addiction, has been
associated with poor academic performance in adolescent populations
(Mythily et al., 2008; Odaci, 2011; Yang and Tung, 2007). The root cause
of this would appear to share similarities with technology addiction overall,
where individuals are spending their time engaged in activities that disrupt
learning. These processes could be linked directly to aspects of interference
or distraction, or could also be associated with fatigue as individuals engage
in online activities at the expense of sleep (Kubey et al., 2001). Poor sleep
patterns have already been previously linked to poorer academic
performance (e.g. Dewald et al., 2010), with excessive use of digital
technology also having an impact on delayed sleep (Brunborg et al., 2011;
Suganuma et al., 2007).
Other research has noted that those individuals who exhibit symptoms of
impulsivity and hyperactivity are more likely to fall into an Internet-
addicted classification (Yoo et al., 2004). The authors of this research
concluded that the presence of ADHD symptoms in children could present
an early predictor for Internet addiction, but there was no suggestion that
Internet addiction has actually caused such symptoms. Other researchers
have also noted a relationship between Internet addiction and symptoms of
ADHD, including Yen et al. (2007, 2009).
In my own research (Hadlington, 2015) Internet addiction had a similar
effect on cognitive failures to mobile phone addiction. Those individuals
who scored higher on the measure of Internet addiction demonstrated a
higher propensity to experience cognitive failures in daily life. Again, as
with the findings for mobile phone addiction, there is an issue with the
attribution of causality – we cannot say that Internet addiction causes higher
levels of cognitive failures, but we can say that those people who are
addicted to the Internet experience more of these failures. The underlying
causes – again this could be due to individual differences in working
memory and attention control, meaning that those people who are more
likely to be distracted and miss things in their daily lives are less likely to
be able to inhibit their use of the Internet. One thing that is very clear is that
research in this area is clearly lacking and we need to do more in order to
understand these effects. It may take several years for the effects of the
Internet, as with any form of digital technology, to show clear and precise
impacts on human cognition.
Social Network Addiction?
There is a delightful case study presented by Karaiskos et al., 2010. They
presented a 24-year-old woman who, according to them, expressed issues
with excessive use of social networking, much to the detriment of her day-
to-day functioning. She had been taken to the clinic as she had been
spending in excess of five hours per day checking her Facebook account. In
the preceding eight months she had accumulated over 400 friends, and had
also ceased many of her normal daily activities. She had lost her job as a
waitress in a local café as she repeatedly left to find the nearest Internet
access in order to check her Facebook page. They also noted that, even
during the examination, the woman repeatedly took out her smartphone in
order to establish an Internet connection so that she could check her page.
After closer examination she was found to exhibit signs of mild anxiety as
well as frequent sleep disturbances. The authors concluded that the patient
had previously been using the Internet for the preceding seven years prior to
getting a Facebook page and had showed no signs of Internet addiction,
suggesting that addiction to social networks could present another sub-
category of technology related addictions.
Of what limited research there has been in the context of cognition and
something that could be loosely termed as social network addiction has
come from (Frein et al., 2013). In Frein et al.’s research they explored the
key differences in memory recall for those individuals who were typified as
high and low users of Facebook. Forty-four participants were split into two
groups according to their level of Facebook use, and then asked to complete
a free recall task in which they had to remember 72 random words. In this
instance, the role of distraction and misguided attention was eliminated as
participants were directly prevented from using any form of electronic
device in order to access Facebook. The results proved to be rather
interesting, showing that those who spent more than one hour per day on
Facebook also scored significantly lower on the test of memory in
comparison with those in the lower-use Facebook group. The authors of this
study make a conclusion based on previous research from Small and
Vorgan, 2008, who noted that actively engaging in activities on the Internet
served to change the brain activation of participants who had never used the
Internet before. They in turn suggested that it is plausible that the use of
Facebook has also created a significant underlying change in the
mechanisms participants use to process and later access information. The
study presents its limitations, as there is no comparison between those
individuals who have never used Facebook before and those who were
more experienced users. In a similar respect, we cannot directly say that
high levels of Facebook use are the same as an addictive level of use, so the
link here between the two is tenuous at the least. However, it does give us
the basis to start to do more research into the area and highlights a
difference according to memory and level of engagement with social
networking sites such as Facebook.
Technology Addiction: With Caveats
To say that someone is suffering from a particular type of addiction, such as
Internet, smartphone or social networking, is something of an
oversimplification in its own right. As Griffiths (Griffiths, 1998, 2012;
Widyanto and Griffiths, 2007) noted, the actual overall addiction
(particularly in the instance of smartphone and Internet typologies) tends to
mask the true underlying addiction. For example, let us take an example of
a person who is spending an excessive amount of time online shopping. The
compulsive behaviour here is potentially the need to spend money online
and acquire something new, irrespective of whether they need that thing or
not (see Rose and Dhandayudham, 2014, for a really good discussion of
online shopping addiction). However, the tool used in order to gain access
to the primary addiction of shopping online is that of the Internet. It would
therefore appear to be pretty logical to assume that such an individual will
of course exhibit signs of Internet addiction. As you can see, the addiction
to online shopping is being masked, overlooked or overshadowed by the
overarching connection to the Internet, which poses the question of how
best we view such addictions to technology. For the most part, researchers
such as Widyanto and Griffiths (2007) have argued that true Internet
addidction (as supposedly that of smartphone addiciton) does not truly
exist. Griffiths (2000) presented this distinction very succintly when he
suggested a degree of caution when attributing the focus of addiction – is
the addiction to the Internet or an addiction on the Internet? It is useful to
have this question in your mind when exploring research looking at aspects
of addiction to technology, especially those such as Internet and
smartphone.
Summary
It could be the case that over the coming years, as we spend more time with
technology, such ‘addictions’ will become the norm and a level of use we
currently see as being excessive will be the status quo. As research
methodologies and the development of more sensitive scales progress, there
could be a point at which diagnostic tools are presented that give us the
capacity to strip out the Internet from the underlying addiction, perhaps to
highlight Internet-enabled addictions. When I first started writing this book,
I was never entirely sure that a chapter on addiction to technology would
fit, given that much of the research focuses very heavily on links to
personality factors. However, when delving a little bit deeper into the
underlying consequences of excessive technology use, it becomes clear that
incidences of cognitive functioning being impaired are a common feature of
the research. In the studies that have been reviewed above, individuals
report aspects of being unable to focus on their work, are distracted, or
suffer from fatigue due to lengthy periods of use or lack of sleep. These
aspects all show potential for impaired cognition, especially where
individuals are spending more time thinking about the focus of the
addiction rather than the thing they should be doing! Research of my own
shows that there is a link between technology addiction and the incidence of
cognitive failures in daily life, but caution is advised when interpreting
these results. We cannot say for sure that addiction to technology is the
direct cause of these cognitive failures, as there may be an underlying link
to individual differences in attentional control – which in turn means people
are more likely to be addicted to digital technology are also more likely to
be prone to cognitive failures. As has been made clear throughout this book,
the only way to explore this further is – you’ve guessed it – more research!

OceanofPDF.com
12 The End Where Do We Go from Here?
As we have seen throughout this book, the use (and mere presence) of
digital technology can have an influence on human cognition. Although I
have attempted to strike a balance between both the positives and the
negatives, some readers may come away with the notion that it is all doom
and gloom. This isn’t the case and there are some really good examples
where digital technology can aid individuals in their day-to-day lives.
Smartphones present individuals with newer and more innovative ways of
recording, transferring and presenting information, and allow this material
to be accessed by an increasingly wider audience. Likewise, those
individuals or environments that were previously isolated, whether due to
geography, physical disability or social barriers, can now engage in a wealth
of activities that would have otherwise remained outside their experience.
The end of any book always appears to have some form of finality to it, but
in this instance I am going to challenge the reader to take the material
discussed here further. The story that has been told throughout the chapters
of this book remains far from a complete one, and a great deal of work still
remains if we are to gain a greater understanding of whether and how
digital technology is changing the way in which we think. I make no
apologies for constantly bombarding the reader with the need to do more
research into this area, and the material that has made up the substantive
part of this book still remains the tip of the iceberg. It is only over the
coming years, as humans spend increasingly more and more time engaged
in new and more immersive forms of digital technology, that the impact on
human cognition will become clearer. Moreover, we will start to gain a
better understanding of how humans are using existing cognitive skills in
their interactions with digital technology, and by doing so will be able to
design better and more useful experiences, particularly in the fields of
education, information presentation and entertainment.
One key point that we have to remember is that the development of digital
technology is a contextually recent thing within the history of the human
race. We don’t really know how or whether the digital technology we are
using today will change the way in which we think, and it is perhaps far too
early to make such massive assertions based on what is perhaps less than a
quarter of a century of being exposed to such. However, some writers have
suggested that the speed at which technology is being adopted is increasing,
pointing to the history of technology adoption over the past hundred years.
For example, Michael DeGusta, writing for the MIT Technology Review
(2012), noted that whilst it took 30 years for electricity to reach a 10 per
cent adoption rate, and that for telephones it was 25 years, it has taken
smartphones 10 years to reach a 40 per cent adoption rate (taking 2002 as
the shipment date of the first BlackBerry device). Although the data used by
DeGusta is solely based on US market data, it does present an interesting
snapshot of how quickly some areas of the globe are adopting digital
technology. Such notions are echoed by earlier suggestions by Felton
(2008), who, writing for the New York Times, also noted that more recent
technological innovations such as the computer and the Internet have been
adopted more quickly than the older, analogue technology. So will this
meteoric surge in the adoption of new technologies map onto a similar rise
in changes to human cognition? Again, only time and more research will
tell.

OceanofPDF.com
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and tables.
absorption, 131
academic performance, 134–135
see also educational attainment
access to data, 47
accessibility, 146
action video games (AVGs), 70–71, 72–74, 76–77, 96
active information processors see information processors
ACT-R model, 90–91
addiction, 6, 7, 14
adolescence, 44
behavioural, 180–181
caveats, 188–189
email, 122
Internet, 134, 186–187
media multitasking (MMT), 95
mobile phones and smartphones, 181–186
social networks, 187–188
adolescence see younger people
adoption rates, 192
advertising, 51–52
banner adverts, 57, 60–61
banner blindness, 63, 64–65, 64
clickbait, 160, 161
credibility judgement, 159–160
pop-up ads, 59–60
semantic salience, 54
affordances, 153
cognitive, 39
age, 40, 80–81
see also generational differences; younger people
agency, 154–155
Alexander, J.E., 160
algorithms, 32
Alloway, T., 128
altered perceptions, 14
Alzahabi, R., 94
analysis, 47–48
anchoring effect, 176
Anderson, C., 47
Anderson, J.R., 90
Anguera, J.A., 81
animation, 55–57, 60, 61
Antonenko, P.D., 138–139
Appelbaum, L.G., 72
application, 146
Ashcraft, M.H., 20
asynchronous communication, 12
attention, 24–25
divided, 25–26, 86
endogenous processes, 52–54, 55–56, 59–60, 94
exogenous processes, 53–54, 55, 59, 60–62, 77, 94
failures in, 62–66
impact of animation on, 55–57, 60, 61
impact of brain training on, 81
impact of motion on, 55–56, 57–58, 62
impact of pop-up ads, 59–60
impact of video games on, 72–74, 76–77
and memory, 27
and multitasking, 94–95, 96, 129
perceptual saliency, 55, 56, 58
selective, 25
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 115, 187
attention switching, 88
attentional blink, 73
attentional capture, 54
attentional control, 186
authority heuristics, 154–155
automatic versus controlled processing, 27
availability, 146
awareness mechanisms, 111
Baddeley, A.D., 28
Bailey, B., 111
bandwagon heuristic, 154, 158
banner adverts, 57, 60–61
banner blindness, 63, 64–65, 64
Bartram, L., 57–58
Basoglu, K.A., 113–114
Baumeister, R.F., 8
Bavelier, D., 72, 73
Bayles, M.E., 57
Becker, M.W., 94
behavioural addictions, 180–181
behavioural salience, 181
behaviourism, 20
being-there heuristic, 154
Benbunan-Finch, R., 87
Bennett, S., 38–39, 40
Benway, J.P., 63
Bianchi, A., 182
Biggs, J., 41
Blumberg, F.C., 76
Boot, W.R., 74–75
bounded rationality, 33
Brain Age, 81
brain development, 45–46, 79–80
Brain Gym, 79–80
brain training, 77–78
criticism, 81–82
impact on the developed mind, 80–81
impact on the developing mind, 79–80
transfer effects, 78–79, 81–82
Brand-Gruwel, S., 166
bricolage, 127
Brown, J.S., 39
Brown, R.I.F., 180
Brown, S., 140
Browne, G., 171–176
browsing, 164–165
browsing heuristic, 156
Brumby, D.P., 167, 168
Buchanan, T., 16
Buitenweg, J.I.V., 81
bullying, 8
Burbules, N.C., 148, 160
Burke, M., 54, 57, 60
Burnett, S., 45
Byrne, M.D., 167
Cain, M.S., 77, 96
Carrier, L.M., 90
cascade effect, 158
Catfish, 13
Chang, Y.-L., 116
change blindness, 63–64, 65–66
channel convergence, 160
chat rooms, 12–13
Chen, Y.-F., 134–135
children see younger people
China, 101, 102
choice heuristic, 155
Chou, C., 134
Choudhury, S., 36, 44–45
Christopherson, K., 126
Clark, J.E., 71
clickbait, 160, 161
Cochrane, S., 59
cognitive affordances, 39
cognitive control, 81
cognitive decline, 80–81
cognitive failures, 185–186, 187
Cognitive Failures in Daily Life (CFQ), 183
cognitive load, 30–32
cognitive psychology, 19–21
mind-machine analogy, 21–22
cognitive salience, 181
cognitive stopping rules, 172–174, 173
cognitive training see brain training
Cohen, S., 108
Coiera, E., 176–177
communication, 5, 6, 11–12, 14, 48
complete switch of context, 111
compulsive behaviour, 184
computer metaphor, 21–23
computer-based training applications, 68
concurrent communication, 12
consistency heuristic, 159
context, complete switch of, 111
control, 22
controlled processing, automatic versus, 27
Cooke, L., 61–62
Corragio, L., 107, 110, 112
Cotten, S.R., 128, 130
Cowan, N., 40
credibility, 147–151
credibility judgements, 148–150
Fogg’s Prominence-Interpretation Theory, 150–153
Metzger’s cognitive heuristics, 157–160
and presentation of information, 160–161
Sundar’s MAIN model, 153–157
cross-validation, 159
culture, 37
Cutrell, E., 146
cyberbullying, 8
cybercognition, 2
cyberslacking, 8
cyberspace, 3
definition, 4–6
psychology of, 6–10
altered perceptions, 14
equalized status, 15
flexibility of identity, 13–14
media disruption, 17
recordability, 16–17
 reduced sensations, 11
social multiplicity, 15–16
temporal flexibility, 12–13
text, 11–12
transcended space, 14–15
cyberspace-orientated relationship, 184
Czerwinski, M., 112, 121
Dabbish, L. A., 117
Dahl, R., 45
daily-life disturbances, 183
data, access to, 47
decision-making, 32–33, 143–146
effect of previous experience on, 176–177
Internet use in, 146–149
see also heuristics; search strategies
declarative memory, 29–30
decomposition strategy, 174
DeGusta, Michael, 192
DeStefano, D., 137–138
dialectic reasoning, 37
Diao, F., 59
digital addiction see addiction
digital divide, 38–40, 41–42, 43–44
digital immigrants, 36–37, 46
versus digital natives, 38–40
digital natives, 35, 36, 46
versus digital immigrants, 38–40
learning, 43, 49
online activities, 42–43
reflection, 37–38
digital video games see video games
digital wisdom, 46–48
DiMaggio, P., 41
discovery-based learning, 39–40
discrete events, 107
discretionary task interleaving, 117
disintermediation, 149
disruption, 17
distance learning, 126
distraction heuristic, 154
distractions, 107, 108, 132–134
see also interruptions
divided attention, 25–26, 86
Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, 79–80
Drews, F.A., 98
dual-process theories, 144–146
dual-processing, 137–138
Duncan, S., 75–76
Durlach, P.J., 65
Dyson, B., 22
Dzubak, C.M., 87–88
earned credibility, 151
East Asian cultures, 37
Economic Model of Information Cascade, 158
education, 125–126
changes in, 127
use of technology in, 140–142
see also learning
educational attainment
and multitasking, 129–132
and social networking sites (SNS), 127–129
see also academic performance; learning
efficient interleaving, 130–131
Eichenbaum, A., 70, 71, 72
emails, 121–122
email schedules, 123–124
emotions, 7–9
endogenous driven attention processes, 52–54, 55–56, 59–60, 94
endorsement heuristic, 157–158
Englander, F., 135
enhanced arousal, 131
Enyon, R., 36, 41, 43
episodic memory, 30
equalized status, 15
Ernst, M., 45
excitement hypothesis, 77
executive control, 96
exogenous attention processes, 53–54, 55, 59, 77, 94
impact of task type on, 60–62
expectancy violation heuristic, 159
exposure effect, 176–177
externally (exogenous) driven attention processes, 53–54, 55, 59, 77,
94
impact of task type on, 60–62
extraneous load, 31
Eynon, R., 36
Eysenbach, G., 161
Facebook, 7, 15, 127–128, 129, 130, 187–188
Facer, K., 43
fear of missing out (FoMO), 17
Felton, M., 192
Fidel, R., 165
Flanagin, A.J., 148, 149, 150, 159, 160
flexibility, temporal, 12–13
flexibility of identity, 13–14
flow heuristic, 156
fluid intelligence, 80
Fodor, J., 23
Fogg, B.J., 150–153, 159, 160
formality condition, 23
Franconeri, S.L., 54
Fudge, J.L., 45
Fullerton, L., 151
functional impairment, 184
Furlong, R., 43
gaming see video games
gender differences, 75, 95
generational differences, 35–37, 38–40, 41, 42–44
see also digital immigrants; digital natives; old age; younger
people
Gentile, D.A., 76, 96
geographical boundaries, 14–15
germane cognitive load, 31
Gigerenzer, G., 33
Googlitis, 165
Grabe, M., 126
Granka, L.A., 146
Green, C.S., 72, 73
Griffiths, M., 180, 188–189
Guan, Z., 146
Gupta, A., 122–123
Ha, J.H., 182
Hargittai, E., 41, 151
Hazelhurst, S., 135
Helsper, E.J., 36, 41, 43
heuristics, 32, 143–146
credibility judgements, 148, 153–160
online searches, 168, 169
stopping rules, 171–176, 173
heuristic-systemic model (HSM), 144–145
higher order cognitive functions, 74–76
Hilligoss, B., 149
homo sapiens digital, 46–47
Hovland, C., 149
Howes, A., 167, 168
Hsiao, M.-C., 134
human attention see attention
human decision-making see decision-making
human information processors see information processors
Hyman, I., 98
hyperlinks, 160
hypermedia, 136–137, 153, 160
hypertext, 136, 137–139
identity, flexibility of, 13–14
Iivonen, M., 164–167, 169–170
impulsiveness, 76–77, 96
inattentional blindness, 63, 98
Information Cascade, Economic Model of, 158
information literacy, 164
information problem solving, 164
information processing, failures in, 62–66
information processors, 20–21, 33
information society, 163
information theory, 21
inhibitory control, 96
instant messaging, 122–123, 130
interaction, 5, 10
interaction heuristic, 155
interactivity, 155–156
interleaving, 89, 117, 130–131
see also interruptions; task switching
internally (endogenous) driven attention processes, 52–54, 55–56, 59–
60, 94
internet, 4
Internet
addiction to, 134, 186–187
definition, 4
and education, 127
as psychological construct, 6–10
Internet advertising, 51–52
banner adverts, 57, 60–61
banner blindness, 63, 64–65, 64
clickbait, 160, 161
credibility judgement, 159–160
pop-up ads, 59–60
semantic salience, 54
Internet searches, 32
see also search strategies
Internet use, 42–43
and decision-making, 146–149
impact on academic performance, 134–135
younger people, 35–36
interpretation, 152–153
interruption lag, 109
interruption relevance, 109–110
interruptions, 106
context, 109–112
definitions, 107–109
from emails, 121–122
from instant messaging, 122–123
negative effects, 112–113
and notification content, 111
and notification type, 116
self-interruptions, 107, 115, 117–121
typology, 118–120
and smartphones, 113–115
strategies to reduced, 123–124
and task complexity, 110–111
timeline, 109
timing of, 112
see also interleaving; multitasking; task switching
intrinsic load, 31
Iqbal, S., 111
Jackson, T.W., 121–122
Jaeggi, S.M., 80
James, William, 24
Japan, 100
Jin, J., 117
Junco, R., 128, 129, 130
Kacmar, C.J., 151
Karaiskos, D., 187
Karbach, J., 80
Karpinski, A.C., 127–128
Katz, M.A., 167
Kensinger, E.A., 9
Kessler, S., 129, 132
Kirschner, P.A., 127–128
Köhler, C., 161
Kolikant, Y. B.-D., 127
Kray, J., 80
Kushlev, K., 115
Kuznekoff, J.H., 133, 134
Kwon, M., 183–184
Lau, A., 176–177
Lavie, N., 55
learning, 30
automatic versus controlled processing, 27
and cognitive load, 30–32
computer-based training applications, 68
digital natives, 43, 49
discovery-based, 39–40
distance learning, 126
impact of hypermedia on, 136–137
impact of hypertext on, 137–139
impact of text messaging on, 132–134
and the Internet, 127
use of technology in, 140–142
see also education; educational attainment
learning styles, 40–41, 166
Lee, M.J., 137
LeFevre, J., 137–138
Leibiger, C., 165
Leiva, L., 114–115
Lenhart, A., 132
levelling effect, 160
limited resource capacity models, 89
Lin, Y.-H., 184–185
long-term memory, 29–30, 29
Loth, Renee, 100
Luminosity, 82
Lumos Labs, 77–78, 82
MAIN model, 153–157
Marchionini, G., 163
Marci, C., 132
Marulanda-Carter, L., 121–122, 123
McCoy, S., 59
McKinney, K.A., 36, 44–45
McKnight, D.H., 151
meaning, memory for, 30
media disruption, 17
media multitasking (MMT), 92–95
memory
and attention, 27
long-term memory, 29–30, 29
and negative emotions, 9
non-declarative memory, 29
semantic memory, 30
short-term memory (STM), 27, 40, 75
transactive memory, 2
working memory (WM), 28–29, 28, 81, 128, 137, 186
memory for goal theory, 92
mental processes, 20
metacognition, 10
Metzger, M.J., 148, 149, 150, 157–160
Miller, D.J., 79
mind-machine analogy, 21–22
missing out, fear of (FoMO), 17
Mitroff, S.R., 96
Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale (MPPUS), 182, 183
mobile phones, 25–26, 97–100, 133, 181–186
see also smartphones
modality, 153–154
mood modification, 180
moral panic, 36
Moser, K., 124
motion, 55–56, 57–58, 62
motivational stopping rules, 172
movement see motion
multiple object tracking task (MOT), 73–74
multiple relationships, 15–16
multiple resource theories, 90
multiprocessing, 39
multitasking, 40, 85–86
digital natives, 39
disadvantages, 97–100
and educational attainment, 129–132
 and individual differences, 95–96
versus interruptions, 106
media multitasking (MMT), 92–95
old age, 81
origins, 86–89
supertaskers, 96–97
theories, 89–92
younger people, 93
see also task switching
Muser, J., 140
navigability, 156–157
negative emotions, 9
net democracy, 15, 148
neuroplasticity, 44–46, 78
Niederhause, D.S., 138–139
Nisbett, R.E., 37
non-declarative memory, 29
notification content, 111
notification types, 116
Nouchi, R., 81
Oei, E.C., 73
old age, 80–81
see also generational differences
old-media heuristics, 154
online activities, 42–43
online chat rooms, 12–13
online dating, 16
online searches, 32
see also search strategies
Ophir, E., 93–94
order effect, 176
O’Reilly, T., 140
orienting reflex (OR), 59, 77
overuse, 184
Owen, A.M., 82
Owens, J.W., 64
Papert, S., 127
parallel processing, 88–89
Pascarella, E.T., 129
Patterson, M.D., 73
Payne, Sarah, 14
Peng, S.S., 134–135
perceptions, altered, 14
perceptual saliency, 55, 56, 58
performance concurrency, 87
personal learning environments (PLEs), 141
perspectives, 48
persuasive intent heuristic, 159–160
PEW Internet Research Centre, 114, 147, 181
Phillips, J.G., 182
polychronicity, 86
popularity bias, 158
pop-up ads, 59–60
Portal 2, 82
positive anticipation, 183
Prensky, M., 35, 37–38, 46–48
presumed credibility, 150
problem solving, 75
information problem solving, 164
prominence, 151–152
Prominence-Interpretation Theory, 150–153
psychological construct, internet as, 6–10
psychology of cyberspace, 6–10
altered perceptions, 14
equalized status, 15
flexibility of identity, 13–14
media disruption, 17
recordability, 16–17
reduced sensations, 11
social multiplicity, 15–16
temporal flexibility, 12–13
text, 11–12
transcended space, 14–15
pure notification, 111
“push” notifications, 113–115
Quinlan, P., 22
Rabipour, S., 78
Radvansky, G.A., 20
Ralph, B.C.W., 94–95
Randall, J.D., 76
Ravizza, S.M., 130
Raz, A., 78
reading speed, 72
realism heuristic, 153–154
recordability, 16–17
reduced sensations, 11
reflection, 37–38
reinforcement effect, 177
reported credibility, 151
reputation heuristic, 157
resource competition, 130, 131
resumption lag, 109
Rideout, V., 93
Rieh, S.Y., 149
Risko, E.F., 130–131
risky behaviours, 45
Ro, T., 55
Robertson, D.P., 79
Roda, C., 55, 111
Rosen, C., 86, 87, 132
Rosenthal, S.F., 76
Rouet, J.F., 168
Rubinstein, J.S., 88
rules-of-thumb, 32
Russell, C., 55
safety, 97–98, 99–100
Sahami Shirazi, A., 114, 116
salience, 54, 180, 181
saliency, 54, 55, 56, 58
Salvucci, D.D., 91–92
Sanbonmatsu, D.M., 86, 96
Sapp, D.A., 126
scaffolding heuristic, 156–157
schemata, 30
Schenkman, B., 65–66
scientific analysis, 47–48
scientific thought, 75
search engines, 165–166, 169
search processes, 171–176
search strategies, 32, 164–167
effect of previous experience on, 176–177
presentation of information, 167–168
search question, 168–171
stopping rules, 171–176, 173
Searle, J.R., 23
selective attention, 25
selective visual attention, 72–74
self-interruptions, 107, 115, 117–121
typology, 118–120
semantic memory, 30
semantic salience, 54
sensation seeking, 96
sensations, 11
senses, 11, 48
sequential processing, 88
serious gaming, 68–69
Shannon, C.E., 21
short-term memory (STM), 27, 40, 75
see also working memory (WM)
Shute, V.J., 82
Simola, J., 60–61, 62
Simon, H.A., 33
Simon, J.L., 126
Simons, D.J., 54
sleep disturbances, 134, 187
Smartphone Addiction Inventory (SPAI), 184–185
Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS), 183–184
smartphones, 25–26, 36, 100–102, 113–115, 181–186
social brain, 45
social conventions, 13
social isolation, 8
social knowledge construction, 75
social memory see transactive memory
social multiplicity, 15–16
social networking sites (SNS), 132, 135
addiction to, 187–188
and educational attainment, 127–129, 133
social presence heuristic, 155
Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 76
Soucek, R., 124
space, transcended, 14–15
Space Fortress, 71–72
Sparrow, B., 2
spatial cognition, 75
Speier, C., 108
status, equalized, 15
Stavrinos, D., 98
Steffner, D., 65–66
Steinkuehler, C., 75–76
stimulation, 11
stimulus saliency, 54
Stockholm, 100, 102
Strayer, D.L., 96–97, 97, 98
student engagement, 128–129
Suler, J., 10–17, 148
Sundar, S., 153–157
Sunder, S.S., 59
supertaskers, 96–97
surface credibility, 147, 150
Sweller, J., 30–32
symptoms of withdrawal, 180
synchronicity, 12
synchronous communication, 12
Tang, J.C., 116
task complexity, 57, 62, 110–111, 174–175
task granularity, 110, 112
task independence, 87
task structure, 174–175
task switching, 80, 86, 88, 90, 93
impact on education, 132
self-interruptions, 117, 121
see also interleaving; interruptions; multitasking
Tate, M.A., 160
technology addictions see addiction
Tedder, M.C., 137
teenagers see younger people
temporal flexibility, 12–13
Tenopir, C., 167
Terenzini, P.T., 129
Tetris, 81
text, 11–12
texting, 98–99, 132–134
Thornton, B., 181
threaded cognition theory, 91–92
time, 12–13
Titsworth, S., 133, 134
Todorov, A., 144, 145–146
tolerance, 180, 184, 185
Trafton, J.G., 108–109
training applications, 68
transactive memory, 2
transcended space, 14–15
transfer effects, 78–79, 81–82
trolling, 13–14
trustworthiness, 149
Tseng, S., 150–151
Turkle, S., 127
uncertainty reduction, 158
Unified Theory of Multitasking Continuum, 90–92, 91
Unsworth, N., 186
Van Solingen, R., 107
Varakin, D.A., 63
video conferencing, 11
video games, 67–68
action video games (AVGs), 70–71, 72–74, 76–77, 96
categories, 69, 70
definition, 69–70
effect on attention, 76–77
effect on higher order cognitive functions, 74–76
effect on selective visual attention, 72–74
effect on visual perception, 72
impact on cognition, 70–71
serious gaming, 68–69
for training and research, 71–72
see also brain training
virtual learning environments (VLEs), 140
virtual reality, 7
visual perception, 56–57, 72
visual selective attention, 72–74
Wang, P., 167
Watson, J.M., 96–97
Weatherly, J.N., 126
Weaver, W., 21
Web 2.0, 140–141
web-based advertising, 51–52
banner adverts, 57, 60–61
banner blindness, 63, 64–65, 64
clickbait, 160, 161
credibility judgement, 159–160
pop-up ads, 59–60
semantic salience, 54
Wei, F., 132
Weiss, W., 149
Wertsch, J., 127
Western cultures, 37
White, M.D., 164–167, 169–170
Whittle, D.B., 3, 4–6
Whitty, M.T., 16
Wickens, C.D., 26, 90
 Wikipedia, 147
Williams, Robin, 14
Wirth, W., 144, 146
withdrawal, 180, 183, 185
Wood, E., 130
working memory (WM), 28–29, 28, 81, 128, 137, 186
World of Warcraft (WoW), 75–76
World Wide Web (WWW), 4
written text, 11–12
Xin, Z., 80
younger people, 43
brain training, 79–80
digital addictions, 44, 181
Internet use, 35–36
multitasking, 93
neuroplasticity, 44–46
video gaming, 67–68
see also digital natives
Zarro, M., 145
Zhang, P., 56
Zhu, E., 138
Zyda, M., 68

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