Mapping attention across multiple media tasks

Paying attention to media requires continuously selecting and processing relevant information while filtering out numerous competing stimuli. Although the factors that drive toward or away from a single task are relatively well characterized, there is lack of understanding regarding how functions in presence multiple, concurrent tasks. In this manuscript, we report findings four experiments investigating question. Results indicate that, rather than being based on strict hierarchy between “primary” “secondary” tasks, attentional resources distributed across tasks (relative) rewardingness effortfulness each task. More rewarding elicited more attention, attention-capturing influence was magnified when cognitively effortful. These results provide support for recent theoretical advancements psychology research point promising future directions using updated models motivated predict allocation multiple