Media multitasking: feeling groovy.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

People are not very good at media multitasking--like reading a book while watching TV--but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, suggests a study by Ohio State University, Columbus.

"There's this myth among some people that multitasking makes them more productive," says Zheng Wang, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication, "but they seem to be misperceiving the positive feelings they get from multitasking. They are not being more productive--they just feet more emotionally satisfied from their work."

For instance, students who watch TV while reading a book report feeling more emotionally satisfied than those who study without viewing television, but also report that they did not achieve their cognitive goals. They felt satisfied not because they were effective at studying, but because the addition of TV made the studying...