Students regularly combine their homework with listening to the radio or watching television. A survey study demonstrated that about 80% of the high school students regularly do homework with a radio and 50% more or less frequently do homework with a television in the background (Beentjes, Koolstra, & van der Voort, 1996). With so many students combining homework with background media, the question arises whether students' cognitive system is capable of processing the information given in an assignment as accurately with background media as in a single-task situation without background media.
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