BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Always make sure you understand the terminology when beginning a new assignment!
What is meant by “human multitasking” and “cognitive science”?
Read your textbook for a good definition of human multitasking and try searching Gale Virtual Reference Library for a definition of cognitive science.

BOOKS
Books, including e-books, are cataloged in The CAT, Penn State’s online library catalog. To find books for this assignment, try using the search strategy shown below:Notice in the above image that phrase searching is accomplished using single quote marks. The term human multitasking is a Library of Congress Subject Heading (a term assigned to a concept to make search results more relevant), so I chose Subject Heading from the drop-down menu.

Searching by subject heading produces relevant items, but sometimes this type of searching can be too limiting. In the example above, you only get 2 results and they are both for the same book, The Multitasking Mind, available in our campus library and as an electronic book.

Expand your search by selecting appropriate keywords. The Advanced Search strategy below yields some additional electronic books.

Try additional searches using keywords you think would be helpful.

RESEARCH GUIDES
Penn State subject librarians have set up Research Guides to help students navigate the library resources in particular subject areas. The Information Sciences andTechnology Research Guide points out some important databases in your field. Also, check the Computer Science and Engineering Research Guide.

DATABASES
Library-subscription databases provide access to high-quality, credible sources for journal articles.
Save time searching by choosing the Compendex link as both the Compendex and Inspec databases are selected (see the image below).

Combining the terms shown below in the IEEExplore database also yields some good results.

Notice the difference when combining terms in an ACM Digital Library advanced search:

Academic Search Complete is another good database to try as it contains articles from many different disciplines. Since this database uses the same subject headings as The CAT, you can search it as shown below:

 

You can refine your search results to choose only articles from Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.

Again, you may want to expand your search by using a keyword (see below) or by combining keywords.

 

Take a look at the following articles to see the difference between a professional/trade journal article and a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article.

Professional/trade journal article
“Mastering Multitasking”

Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article
“Characterisation of Mental Models in a Virtual Reality-Based Multitasking Scenario Using Measures of Situation Awareness.”