Abstract While digital natives are sometimes perceived as effective multitaskers, empirical studies suggest that multitasking is associated with negative learning outcomes. In this regard, an experiment was conducted to see the effects of secondary task relevance and timing on learning from multimedia presentations. A total of 356 undergraduate students were assigned randomly to either a control condition or one of the multitasking conditions (i.e., relevant-sequential, relevant-concurrent, irrelevant-sequential, and irrelevant-concurrent). While the primary task involved watching a biology video on the life cycle of the malaria parasite, the secondary tasks involved either relevant or irrelevant chat questions, which were presented either concurrently or sequentially with the primary task. Computation span and topic interest were measured as potential covariates. The computation span correlated with the gain scores towards the post-test so it was considered as a covariate. ANCOVA results revealed significant differences across the groups. The students in the control group were more successful than those in the irrelevant-sequential, the irrelevant-concurrent, and the relevant-concurrent conditions. However, the difference between the control group and the relevant-sequential group was not significant. The findings are likely to guide further research on multitasking performance and interactive video design in online learning environments.

中文翻译：

---

次要任务的时间和相关性影响多任务处理性能

摘要 虽然数字原住民有时被认为是有效的多任务处理者，但实证研究表明多任务处理与负面学习结果相关。在这方面，进行了一项实验以了解次要任务相关性和时间对从多媒体演示中学习的影响。共有 356 名本科生被随机分配到控制条件或多任务条件之一（即相关顺序、相关并发、不相关顺序和不相关并发）。主要任务涉及观看有关疟原虫生命周期的生物学视频，而次要任务涉及相关或不相关的聊天问题，这些问题与主要任务同时或依次提出。计算跨度和主题兴趣被测量为潜在的协变量。计算跨度与后测的增益分数相关，因此它被视为协变量。ANCOVA 结果显示各组之间存在显着差异。对照组的学生比不相关顺序、不相关并发和相关并发条件下的学生更成功。然而，对照组和相关序列组之间的差异不显着。这些发现可能会指导在线学习环境中的多任务处理性能和交互式视频设计的进一步研究。对照组的学生比不相关顺序、不相关并发和相关并发条件下的学生更成功。然而，对照组和相关序列组之间的差异不显着。这些发现可能会指导在线学习环境中多任务处理性能和交互式视频设计的进一步研究。对照组的学生比不相关顺序、不相关并发和相关并发条件下的学生更成功。然而，对照组和相关序列组之间的差异不显着。这些发现可能会指导在线学习环境中多任务处理性能和交互式视频设计的进一步研究。