The team asked 63 people, aged between 19 and 28, to fill out questionnaires on their media usage - both the time they spent using various media and the extent to which they used more than one type at a time. They were then given a visual search task, with and without a warning sound signal which contained no information about the visual target's location, but indicated the instant it changed colour.

On average, the people who media multitasked the most tended to be the best at multisensory integration, handling the task better when the tone was present than when it was absent. They also performed worse in the tasks without the tone.

The researchers reckon that the multitaskers' ability to routinely take in information from a number of different sources made it easier for them to take advantage of the unexpected auditory signal in the task.