The prevalence of media multitasking – the concurrent use of multiple forms of media – has motivated research on whether and how it is related to various cognitive abilities, such as the ability to switch tasks. However, previous research on the relationship between media multitasking and task-switching performance has yielded mixed results, possibly because of small sample sizes and a confound between task and cue transitions that resulted in switch costs being impure measures of task-switching ability. The authors conducted a large-sample study in which media multitasking behavior was surveyed and task-switching performance was assessed using two cues per task, thereby allowing switch costs to be partitioned into task-switching and cue-repetition effects. The main finding was no evidence of any relationship between media multitasking scores and task-switching effects (or cue-repetition effects), either in correlational analyses or in extreme group analyses of light and heavy media multitaskers. The results are discussed in the context of previous research, with implications for studying media multitasking in relation to task-switching performance.

媒体多任务处理的普遍性（同时使用多种形式的媒体）推动了人们对它是否以及如何与各种认知能力（如切换任务的能力）相关的研究。但是，先前有关媒体多任务处理与任务切换性能之间关系的研究得出的结果好坏参半，这可能是由于样本量较小以及任务与提示转换之间存在混淆，导致切换成本无法正确衡量任务切换能力。作者进行了一个大样本研究，在该研究中，调查了媒体多任务行为，并使用每个任务两个提示来评估任务切换性能，从而将切换成本划分为任务切换和提示重复效果。主要发现是，在相关分析或轻型和重型媒体多任务处理程序的极端组分析中，没有证据表明媒体多任务处理得分与任务转换效果（或提示重复效果）之间存在任何关系。在先前研究的背景下讨论了结果，对研究与任务切换性能相关的媒体多任务处理具有启示意义。