DOES MOTIVATION (AUTONOMOUS VS CONTROLLED) INFLUENCE PERFORMANCE IN MULTITASKING?

Mobile learning is still gaining importance in education. Learning no longer ties students to one place. Studying ‘anytime and anywhere’ (Maag, 2006; Motiwalla, 2007) allows students to learn while carrying out another activity (Laing & Wootton, 2007), which leads to multitasking. Psychological research which is done mainly in artificial settings, suggests that performance will decline. Results in recent more ecological experiments, where learning with a mobile device is secondary to another task, do not always follow this pattern (Doolittle & Mariano, 2008; Clarebout, Coens, & Elen, 2008; Coens, Clarebout & Reynvoet, 2009b). Among several other possible explanations, motivation could possibly influence performance. Checking this is the aim of this experiment.
We will determine participants’ autonomous vs controlled motivation (Self-Determination Theory, Deci & Ryan, 1985) for learning Spanish words and for driving in a simulator using an adaptation of the Academic Regulation Scale (Ryan & Connell, 1989) as found in Vansteenkiste, Sierens, Soenens, Luyckx, & Lens (2009). We expect that participants who are highly autonomously motivated and lowly controlled motivated will show the best performance. Tests have started already and run through November and December 2010, with results available by Spring of 2011.
Young people multitask more and more; it would be of great value if we could find what influences their performance when doing several tasks at the same time. This knowledge may help educators in their search for more efficient learning.