Investigating the relationship between thinking style and personal electronic device use and its implications for academic performance

This article examines the relationship between students' thinking style and the level of their use of personal electronic devices (PEDs). Also investigated are the educational connotations of PED use and the moderating effect of abstract/concrete reasoning on the relationship between PED use and academic performance. To these ends, 506 Taiwanese college students were surveyed. The results point to the significance of concrete reasoning for the prevalence of non-educational PED use, while thinking style is not statistically useful in explaining educational use of PEDs. We also find that thinking style interacts with educational PED use in determining academic performance. As a whole, using PEDs can be academically beneficial or harmful for students depending on whether they use PEDs for educational or non-educational purposes.