“TV no longer commands our full attention”: Effects of second-screen viewing and task relevance on cognitive load and learning from news

• Second-screen viewing leads to lower news recall and comprehension.
• Effects of second-screen viewing on news learning are mediated by cognitive load.
• Second-screen viewing leads to higher cognitive load than single screen-viewing.
• Higher levels of cognitive load lead to lower news recall and comprehension.
• No differences exist between effects of related and unrelated second screen-viewing.

Second-screen viewing—the use of smartphones, tablets, and laptops while watching television—has increased dramatically in the last few years. Using multiple resource theory and threaded cognition theory, this study investigated the effects of second-screen viewing on cognitive load, factual recall and comprehension of news. Second, we examined the effects of relevant (i.e., looking up information related to the news story) and irrelevant (i.e., looking up information unrelated to the story) second-screen viewing on learning from news. Results from an experiment (N = 85) showed that second-screen viewing led to lower factual recall and comprehension of news content than single-screen viewing. These effects were mediated by cognitive load: second-screen viewing led to a higher cognitive load than single-screen viewing, with higher cognitive load, in turn, leading towards lower factual recall and comprehension of news content. Contrary to our expectations, we found no statistically significant differences between effects of relevant and irrelevant second-screen viewing.