The Effect of Social Media Interruptions on Reading Times and Inconsistency Detection

Digital reading is frequently disrupted by notifications, which demand attention and may undermine reading comprehension. This thesis investigates how social media interruptions affect reading processes, particularly coherence monitoring, which is the ability to construct a coherent situation model of a text. Using a self-paced sentence-by-sentence reading task, this thesis measured reading times to assess the effects of interruptions on reading processes and inconsistency detection. It has been argued that incoming information from the text automatically activates information stored in long-term memory. The incoming information is then automatically integrated with the activated information. Subsequently, this information is validated against background knowledge, either automatically or through a reader-initiated process. It was hypothesised that if coherence processes were passive, interruptions would not affect inconsistency detection. However, if these processes were to some...Show moreDigital reading is frequently disrupted by notifications, which demand attention and may undermine reading comprehension. This thesis investigates how social media interruptions affect reading processes, particularly coherence monitoring, which is the ability to construct a coherent situation model of a text. Using a self-paced sentence-by-sentence reading task, this thesis measured reading times to assess the effects of interruptions on reading processes and inconsistency detection. It has been argued that incoming information from the text automatically activates information stored in long-term memory. The incoming information is then automatically integrated with the activated information. Subsequently, this information is validated against background knowledge, either automatically or through a reader-initiated process. It was hypothesised that if coherence processes were passive, interruptions would not affect inconsistency detection. However, if these processes were to some extent reader-initiated, interruptions would diminish inconsistency detection, especially when the interruption occurred directly before critical information. It has been implied that the information before an interruption is preserved by immediate integration into long-term working memory, while the processing of information directly after an interruption is compromised. To test this, two versions of an experiment were developed. In the first version, the interruption came before the critical information, and in the second version, it came after the critical information. The results show that reading times were longer immediately after the interruption but did not affect the detection of inconsistent information later in the text, regardless of the timing of the interruption. These findings suggest that the processes leading up to detecting an inconsistency are largely passive and automatic. Nonetheless, whether the final validation process is passive or reader-initiated remains a point for further inquiry.Show less

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The Effect of Social Media Interruptions on Reading Times and Inconsistency Detection