Laura Bowman and her colleagues at Connecticut State University, students were randomly assigned to three groups to read a book chapter and take a test.2 One group simply read the chapter and took the test. The second group first completed an instant message conversation with the experimenter and then read the chapter and took the test. The third group started to read the chapter, were interrupted with the same instant message conversation, which was delivered in pieces at various times during the reading, and then took the test. This latter group was designed to simulate the typical studying
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