An investigation of multitasking on the web: key findings

Introduction. This paper presents key findings from a study exploring how multitasking information behaviour is affected by people’s working memory capacity and the flow they experience during the searching process. Method. The research is exploratory using a pragmatic, mixed method approach. 30 study participants, 10 psychologists, 10 accountants and 10 mechanical engineers, conducted Web searches on four information topics. The data collection tools used were: pre and post questionnaires, pre interviews, working memory test, the flow state scale of Jackson and Marsh (1996), audio-visual data, web search logs, think aloud data, observation, and the critical decision method. Results. The results suggested that people with high working memory, high flow and mechanical engineers generated more cognitive coordination and cognitive state shifts than people with low working memory, low flow, accountants and psychologists. The most frequent cognitive state and coordination shift for all groups was from strategy to information topic. Low working memory participants rated task complexity at the end of the procedure more highly for tasks without prior knowledge compared to tasks with prior knowledge. Participants with high flow levels experienced a greater change of knowledge for information tasks without prior knowledge compared to participants with low flow. The degree of change of knowledge for participants with high flow was higher for tasks without prior knowledge rather than for tasks with prior knowledge.