A decade of data reveals that heavy multitaskers have reduced memory

People who frequently engage with multiple types of media at once performed worse on simple memory tasks, according to the last decade of research. However, it's still too soon to determine cause and effect, says psychology Professor Anthony Wagner. The smartphones that are now ubiquitous were just gaining popularity when Anthony Wagner became interested in the research of his Stanford colleague, Clifford Nass, on the effects of media multitasking and attention. Though Wagner, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Memory Laboratory , wasn't convinced by the early data, he recommended some cognitive tests for Nass to use in subsequent experiments. More than 11 years later, Wagner was intrigued enough to write a review on past research findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , and contribute some of his own. A decade's worth of research has shown that people who frequently use many types of media at once performed significantly worse on simple memory tasks. (Image credit: Getty Images) The paper , co-authored with neuroscientist Melina Uncapher of the University of California, San Francisco, summarizes a decade's worth of research on the relationship between media multitasking and various domains of cognition, including working memory and attention.