Abstract
We tested brain and behavioral responses to two common messaging alerts (Outlook and Android whistle) using an oddball paradigm, where participants had to detect the two alerts among a background of white noise and occasional matched, distractor stimuli. Twenty-nine participants were tested using a behavioral target detection task and a subset of 14 were tested both with event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral oddball detection. For the ERP recordings, participants were instructed to attend to a distractor DVD in one condition and in the other, to actively attend to the stimuli. We measured mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a components and questionnaire responses to job involvement, rumination and work-life balance. There were significantly larger MMN responses to target alert signals, but only in the ignore condition. In both ignore and attend conditions, MMN was larger for the Android stimuli, probably as a result of the larger physical discriminability for the Android tone. On the other hand, there was a significant P3a for Outlook tones, but not for Android tones in the ignore condition. Neither alert showed significant P3a activity within the attend condition, but instead later frontal positivity, which was larger for the Outlook alert (in comparison to its matched distractor) and this effect was not seen for the Android tones. This was despite the Outlook alert being less perceptually discriminable compared to the Android alert. These findings suggest that the indices of attentional processing are more affected by the significance of the alert than the physical qualities. These effects were coupled with the finding that the faster reaction times to the Outlook sounds were correlated with greater job involvement. These data suggest that work-related messages might signal greater attentional switch and effort which in turn may feed into greater job involvement.
Highlights
The use of new communication technologies (NCTs) is an increasingly important part of our personal and work lives
It was found that d measures significantly differed for the two target type sounds (F1,27 = 8.062, p < 0.01), with the perceptual sensitivity greater for the Android alert than for the Outlook alert
The hit rate and reaction time to Outlook and Android alert sounds did not significantly differ and did not differ as a function of whether the participant reported that they had that sound as a primary alert on their own devices
Summary
The use of new communication technologies (NCTs) is an increasingly important part of our personal and work lives. Brain Responses to Common Messaging Alerts have studied the stress from the use of these technologies (e.g., Mazmanian et al, 2006; Park and Jex, 2011; Park et al, 2011; Stawarz et al, 2013; Collins et al, 2015), the focus has been on overall, longer term effects. A study of the immediate effect of messaging notifications at work and at home which would potentially account for how a barrage of messaging communication might potentiate longer term stress. This work would answer the question of whether reducing immediate work-related communication strain reduces longer term stress and a sense of ‘boundary keeping’ (Park and Jex, 2011; Park et al, 2011). If links were found between cognitive processing of such alerts and long term indices of job involvement/wellbeing, this may provide initial evidence for the hypothesis that excessive short term arousal/readiness is linked to longer term wellbeing at work issues
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