EXPERIMENTAL EFFECTS OF RADIO AND TELEVISION DISTRACTORS ON CHILDRENSPERFORMANCE ON MATHEMATICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS

One explanation for why many students routinely choose to do their hom ework with a radio or TV operating is that this distraction facilitate s studying. To investigate the validity of this explanation, the autho rs carried out two experiments with sixth-grade students who worked on two difficulty levels of individualized mathematics assignments (N = 12) and reading assignments (N = 9) under three distraction conditions : quiet; self-selected, self-regulated radio; and self-selected, self- regulated TV. The data yielded no evidence of sizable distractor effec ts on students' time spent studying, computational accuracy, reading c omprehension, or reading rate. These results generally are consistent with the theoretical conceptualization of attention as flexible and ad aptable.