Multitasking Manipulation

Participants answered five reading comprehension questions about the article (see

Appendix 1) and could not look back at the paragraph when they were taking the comprehension test. Participants with only one task performed slightly better on the reading task than

participants with two tasks and three tasks [Mone = 3.71(1.30), Mtwo = 3.33(1.22), Mthree = 3.05(1.25)]. However, the means were not significantly different [F(2,120) = 2.89, p =.06, η²

= .01].

3.6.4 Hypothesis Testing

In hypothesis one, I postulated that when participants were exposed to a competitive ad context their recall and recognition of the advertised brands would have decreased if they engaged in media-multitasking (two and three tasks) compared with those who engaged in a single media task.

Results showed that participants with a single media task could remember more ads compared to those with two or three media tasks. There was a significant effect of total number of tasks on recall [F(2, 120) = 3.57, p >.05, η² = .06]. Participants in one-task group [M

= .90(1.13)) performed significantly better than two-task group [M = .36(.84))and three-task

group [M = .40(.85)). There was a significant main effect of the total number of tasks on

recognition [F(2, 120) = 3.99, p <.05, η² =.06]. While the one-task group [M = .66(.32)) and the two-task group [M = .59(.31))] were not significantly different [F(1, 121) = .61, p > .05, η²

=.008]. the one-task group and the three-task group [M = .47(.29)] were significantly different [F(1, 82) = 7.65, p < .01, η² =.09].

In hypothesis two, we predicted that recall and recognition of the advertised brand would not be negatively affected for those who used a holistic processing style that was induced by a positive mood and engaged in media multitasking as compared to those who use analytic processing style that was induced by a negative mood when engaged in media multitasking.

There was no significant interaction effect of processing style and the number of tasks on recognition [F(4,117) = 1.30, p > .05, η² = .02], regardless of types of processing styles.

The results showed that participants who used a holistic processing style that was induced by a positive mood and who engaged with three tasks didn’t show a significant difference of recognition scores between the one-task group and the three-task group [Mone = .58(.37), Mthree

= .49(.28); p = .097] or between the two-task group and the three-task group [Mtwo= .53(.32), Mthree = .49(.28); p = .103].

According to post hoc Tukey’s test, articipants who used a holistic style that was induced by a positive mood and who engaged with three tasks didn’t show a significant difference of recall scores when comparing between the one-task group and the three-task group [Mone = 1(1.51), Mthree = .48(.95); p = .257] or between the two-task group and the three-task group [Mtwo= .44 (1.10), Mthree = .48(.95); p = .26].

Post hoc Tukey’s test results showed that participants with an analytic processing style that was induced by a negative mood had a significantly greater recognition score for a single

task compared to three tasks [Msingle = .73(.24), Mthree = .44(.31); p < .007). Participants in the two-task group also had a significantly greater recognition score compared to the three-task group [Mtwo = .66 (.31), Mthree = .44 (.31); p < .050].

On the other hand, according to post hoc Tukey’s test, participants with an analytic processing style that was induced by a negative mood did not have a significantly greater recall score for a single task compared to three tasks [Mone = .79(1.08), Mthree = .45(83); p = .257], nor was there a significant difference between two tasks and three tasks [Mtwo= .29(.56), Mthree = .45 (.83); p = .260] (see table 2).

Table 3

Independent and dependent variables

Variable Mean SD chronbach’s

alpha Range

Reading Comprehension 3.36 1.281 5

Mood Manipulation Score 4.06 0.91 0.851 4.29

Number of tasks 2.02 0.83 2

AHS Score 4.4 0.73 0.781 4.17

Recall 0.55 1.05 4

Recognition 0.57 0.32 1

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Summary of Findings

There is a significant main effect of the total number of tasks on recall and reading comprehension. Because participants were not allowed to go back to the page to reread the article, both reading comprehension and recall depended solely on retrieval of the information they previously saw. There was a significant difference between the one-task group, the two-task group and the three-task group on participants' performance on the recognition task. Task

interference studies have shown that even simple tasks performed simultaneously can lead to significant performance differences (Pashler, 1994). This result is consistent with the limited capacity model (Lang, 2000). This model explains why people’s performance is worse under a media multitasking condition. According to this model, individuals possess limited resources to dedicate to encoding, understanding, and retrieving information processed from the world around them. Encoding is the process of selecting stimuli that will later be stored as mental

representations of the environment. Retrieval is the mental activation of this information. In a multitasking environment, participants’ attention is divided between several tasks

simultaneously. They are exposed to high perceptual load that is fully exhausted by their central tasks, resulting little capacity left for the peripheral stimuli (Lavie, 1995). This explains why participants in the one-task group had a much higher score of recall and recognition compared with participants in the two-task and three-task groups.

There was not a significant difference between the two-task group and the three-task group on recall. One possible explanation for this result is attention modality. According to previous research (Wang et al., 2012), different combinations of media usage yielded different

results, indicating that combining internet browsing (visual) with radio listening (auditory) had a much less detrimental effect on memory compared to combining internet browsing and digital social media interaction, which are both visual tasks.

While mood manipulation and processing style were successful, there was not an

interaction between processing style and the number of tasks. Maybe it was due to both positive and negative mood groups had scores that were very close to the mid point [Mpositive= 4.62(.089) and Mnegative= 3.46(.092)]. The other possible reason why there was not an interaction effect between processing style and the number of tasks might be due to types of memory measure (recall and recognition). The method of measurement used in this study was familiarity recognition, which tested how well individuals knew the information based on whether the information was presented before (Squire, Wixted, & Clark, 2007). According to Duff and Sar (2015), while they didn’t find any significant difference in recognition between participants who had used holistic processing styles and those who used analytic processing styles when

multitasking, results of recollection measurement of the exposed brands showed that there was a significant difference between these two different processing styles. Based on Duff and Sar’s study in 2015, it is reasonable to assume that, if recollection was used instead of recognition as the method of measurement, there might have been a significant interaction effect between processing style and media multitasking.

Although there was not a significant main effect of processing style, nor was there an interaction effect of processing style and the number of tasks on brand recall and recognition (familiarity), recall and recognition of participants with holistic processing style did not decrease.

Between-groups results showed that, while participants with a holistic processing style did not have a significant decrease in the recognition task when the total number of tasks increased from one to three, participants with an analytic processing style suffered significantly in terms of

recognition. However, processing style did not have the same effect on recall. Both positive and negative mood groups (holistic and analytic processing style) recalled significantly worse when the total number of tasks increased from one to three tasks. This is consistent with the study by Duff and Sar (2015). In their study (Duff & Sar, 2015), participants who had utilized a holistic processing style did not feel that the tasks were significantly more difficult when the total

number of tasks increased, while participants who used an analytic processing style said that one task is significantly easier than multiple tasks. This study indicates that not only do processing styles affect participants’ perception of the difficulty of media multitasking, they also made recognizing brands less difficult for individuals with a holistic processing style when the total number of tasks increased. The difference in results of recall and recognition is due to the differing natures of these two kinds of memory. Both recognition and recall memory performance are closely related and depend on declarative memory, but only recognition memory depends on how the subject was perceptually primed, which means only recognition is affected by the processing style that was induced by mood (Haist & Shimamura, 1992; Duff &

Sar, 2015).

4.2 Limitations

One limitation of this study was the mood manipulation. According to the experimental results, both the positive and negative groups’ mood scores were very close to the mid point.

While mood manipulation was successful and significantly affected processing style, the effect was not big enough to change how much consumers remembered the exposed brands. What’s more, according to previous studies, negative mood manipulation is usually more effective than positive mood manipulation (Larsen & Timothy, 1989). This may have contributed to the lack of an effect of mood on recognition or recall of ads.

Another limitation was the selection of stimuli. Since the competitive ad context was

comprised of tablets of eight different fictitious brands, the iPad used in two-task and three-task groups to play the video might have a perpetual priming effect those two groups. Several studies have suggested that perceptual priming can affect recognition memory positively (Rajaram &

Geraci 2000; Turk-Browne et al., 2006). It is possible that there could have been a bigger difference of recognition between the one-task group and two-task group if the two-task group didn’t receive the priming effect from using the iPad. Furthermore, selection of target brands was not pretested which created possible confounded. For example, some studies showed that color might have an effect on perceptual processing style. According to Elliot et al. (2009), blue is generally associated with approach while red is associated with aversive arousal and failure. In this study, it was unclear if the different colors of the eight logos had changed participants’

processing style due to lack of pretesting. Due to the complexity of controlling the color of brand logos and the absence of previous studies on how color interacted with media multitasking, this factor was not taken into consideration for this study.

A third limitation of this study is that a recollection memory test was not included as part of the measurement. According to Duff and Sar (2015), recollection is more sensitive to

processing style manipulation compared to a recognition test. If recollection was included as part of the final measurement, there might have been a significant main effect of mood on memory.

However, due to the need to study how a competitive ad context affects brand memory, brand claims in this study were intentionally designed to be highly similar to each other, which creates significant difficulty for participants in matching brand logos with their brand claims, rendering a recollection test a less effective measurement for brand memory. Recollection tests the

qualitative aspect of exposed stimuli and reflects associations between different components of an event (Yonelinas, 2002). A recollection test requires participants to make judgments about the co-occurrence of different items, which is more in favor of a holistic processor. Familiarity, on

the other hand, reflects the quantitative memory, such as memory strength of a single item, by asking participants to recognize exposed and non-exposed items (Yonelinas, 2002). In the context of this experiment, participants with an analytic processing style might have a better performance in familiarity tasks since analytic processor are more likely to focus on a single item instead of paying attention to the association between different items. What’s more, participants were not instructed to make forced choices according to tradition SDM method, resulting in a comparative lower score of recognition and possible measurement biases.

A fourth limitation of this study was that processing styles were measured at the end of the study. While there was a significant relationship between mood and processing style, participants might have been exposed to the testing effects that render the results less accurate.

A fifth limitation of this study was the measurement of attention. There are four modes of attention: sustained attention, divided attention, selective attention and attention switching (McDowd & Birren,1990). While participants in this experiment were instructed to pay equal attention to all tasks and were later questioned whether they paid equal attention to all tasks, there was no memory related question regarding how much attention did they pay to the listening task or the video viewing task. According to previous researches (McDowd & Birren,1990).

During media multitasking, two kinds of attention might happen: divided attention and selective attention. Participants with a divided attention can have a lower performance on at least one task due to limited resource capacity (Lang, 2000), while individuals with a selective attention could have focused on a task and filter out irrelevant information. Without the measurement of how much attention was paid to the second or third task, we only relied on participants’ self-report instead of measurement to see how much much attention did they paid to each task.

Another limitation of this study is the apparatus. While the competitive ad context was

groups to play the video. While the size of the effect is uncertain, it is possible that perpetual priming might have happened for two-task and three-task groups who were exposed to the iPad.

Several studies have suggested that perceptual priming can affect recognition memory positively (Rajaram & Geraci 2000; Turk-Browne et al., 2006). Priming can enhance the efficacy of

explicit memory at the stage of encoding (Miyoshi, Minamoto, & Ashida, 2014). Perceptual priming is based on the form of stimuli. Studies have shown that even when visual presentations are not perfectly consistent, perceptual priming can still affect explicit memory significantly (Geva, Moscovitch, & Leach, 1997). Since the two-task group and the three-task group were exposed to an iPad that has a similar shape to stimuli, it is possible that there could have been a bigger difference in recognition between the one-task group and two-task group if the two-task group didn’t receive the priming effect from using the iPad.

4.3 Conclusions

This study has shown that processing styles induced by mood did play a role in how people pay attention to a complex media environment, such that individuals with a holistic processing style were more likely to recognize a previously exposed brand in an informational rich environment while media multitasking. Further research should be done to investigate different combinations of media multitasking as well as how processing styles that were induced by mood could interact with multitasking to affect consumer behavior.

The theoretical meaning of this study expands the current research on

affect-as-information model by combining a competitive ad context, mood induced processing style, and media multitasking together. This study seeks to build on the study by Duff and Sar (2015) with different measurements (recall and recognition in this study instead of recognition and

recollection), different ad formats (banner ad instead of TV commercials) and higher task

difficulty (reading comprehension compared to drawing slashes). Future studies might examine different measurements and combinations of primary task and secondary task formats to

understand how media multitasking can interact with mood, different context, and different modality.

The findings from this study could also help advertising practitioners. The results could help advertising professionals better understand how media-multitasking and a competitive ad context can affect a consumer’s memory of exposed brands. As mentioned in the introduction, media-multitasking is so prevalent amongst younger people that brands have to understand how advertisement effectiveness is affected by those variables. The findings from this study would benefit advertising professionals who wish to optimize their advertisement investment plan. For example, this study could help online advertising platforms like Google or Facebook to improve their online advertising ranking algorithm. With access to cookies and previous viewing history, Google can change the density of advertised information based on the affective valence of the contents consumers read. For example, if the viewer is watching a YouTube video that is a comedy (positive mood), more banners ads in the same category can appear with the ad as consumers are more likely to remember them. However, if the viewer watches a YouTube video that features negative content, fewer ads should placed in that content because it would be difficult for consumers how use analytic processing to remember ads. As another example, if Facebook can run a real time analysis of all the posts each person reads and calculate the aggregated emotional valence of the posts combined for each viewer, it could adjust the density and the competitiveness of the ads displayed on the Facebook sidebar. For those who are reading Facebook threads that are negative in content, density can be lower, and vice versa for those who are reading posts that are positive in content.

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