Facing the Music: Performance Implications of Working with Music in the Background Multitasking is a subfield of HumanComputer Interaction that addresses people performing multiple tasks on one or more devices. While there is a significant body of work on interleaved multitasking, where people start a task, switch to a different task, and then continue the original task, few studies have examined parallel multitasking, where two or more tasks are happening at the same time, on a single device. Listening to music while working on a computer or mobilebased task falls into this latter category. Music is more prevalent in our society at this point than at any other point in history. People now have the ability to stream music from their mobile devices while performing any task. Gathering a deeper understanding of how music affects performance on different tasks will help further our understanding of parallel multitasking. In order to examine how music impacts performance we created an Android application where participants perform five different types of cognitive tasks on a mobile device: mental arithmetic, memory, reading comprehension, concentration, and spatial abilities. Participants were divided into three conditions: music with lyrics, music without lyrics (instrumental music) and no music. We found that, except for spatial tasks where music helped performance, generally music had a negative impact on performance in our modules. This implies that listening to music while completing tasks is another form of multitasking and can lead to negative results.

Worker stress in the age of mobile technology: The combined effects of perceived interruption overload and worker control Abstract   Mobile technologies have dramatically increased the number of workrelated interruptions, especially after regular work hours. At the same time, many employees have limited freedom to decide how and when they accomplish their work, a condition that renders the explosion of interruptions especially problematic. This study proposes that perceived interruption overload negatively impacts workrelated technologyusage via workersxe2x80x99 experiences of worklife conflict, a key source of stress, and that this indirect effect is stronger for lower levels of worker control (moderated mediation). Data were collected from 601 knowledge workers and analyzed through Conditional process analysis, which integrates moderation and mediation analyses. The results supported our model. This study takes an important step toward elucidating the role of mobile technology in worklife conflict and technostress, and it illustrates the roles of perceived interruption overload as well as conflict and technostress in IT use.