Symposium: Impacts of Media Multitasking on Children's Learning & Development

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Media multitasking is defined in the literature as engaging in more than one media activity, such as watching TV, reading, playing video games, or instant messaging, over a specified period of time. Media multitasking is a growing phenomenon observed among 8-18 year olds, yet little is known regarding how this behavior influences key cognitive, developmental and behavioral processes which affect the way young people learn, reason, socialize, think creatively, and understand the world. Previous research in the adult population generally shows that media multitasking negatively impacts productivity. However, little research to date has examined the processes underlying children's media multitasking or how such processes may affect cognitive development and learning. Clifford Nass of the Stanford CHIMe Lab and Roy Pea, Co-PI of the NSF LIFE (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments) Center, in partnership with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, will convene a symposium for an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars from neuroscience, child development, cognitive, communication, and education fields, and key policy leaders to advance our understanding of the potential implications of media multitasking for learning and cognitive development in children and youth. The primary goal of the symposium is to define a coherent agenda to stimulate needed theory-based research on the implications of media multitasking for learning and cognitive development. The symposium will consist of three panels of multi-disciplinary experts to examine: a) media multitasking and cognitive development, b) media multitasking, learning and productivity, and c) design principles for leveraging media multitasking in educational contexts. A meeting report will be distributed on the symposium website and in print form. The symposium website will also facilitate communication and knowledge sharing among a newly defined research community and serve as a clearinghouse for information on the implications of media multitasking for cognitive development and learning. Overall, the activities associated with this grant will help activate a new special interest academic community, and encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration across institutional, intellectual and methodological disciplines. Through understanding how media multitasking may affect psychological processes underlying learning and cognition, practitioners will be better prepared to inform policy and to maximize educational impact in a broad range of learning contexts.