David Glenn's Divided Attention

In David Glenn’s “Divided Attention” an article for The Chronical Review, emphasizes the strain of classroom multitasking and detrimental side effects it has the nature of learning, memory and intelligence. In my evaluation of this article I’ve found the Glenn reasoning to be partially accurate, however he neglects to inform the readers on the increasing demand multitasking has placed on students in a new age enhanced by the advancements of technology.

In “Divided Attention” Glenn tries to unravel the phenomenon of multitasking in classrooms. In this new age of technology many “self-described multitaskers” feel stimulated, alert, and assertive in absorbing information. However in Glenn’s article he provided various studies conducted by scholars

In other words, there are differences in people’s ability to concentrate within distraction that only range to a certain point. For instance, Glenn states “People, can walk and chew gum at the same time, but not walk, chew gum, play Frisbee and solve calculus problems.” Glenn relates his statement to paper written in 1956 by George A. Miller who suggested that human working memory capacity or the ability to manipulate facts and perform mental operations are limited to roughly seven units. Miller has recognized this as informational bottleneck that has a profound constraint on human cognition. He states that there two ways to optimize what we process one is to “chunk” information so that more material can be packed. Into each of the seven units, the second is managing attention so unwanted stimuli doesn’t push out what we are trying to learn or think

It seems our society is still trying to obtain the ever so elusive principle of time. By multitasking we’ve have developed the perception that by performing two or more different tasks simultaneously that we can reduce the amount of time it takes to complete on single task; and once we’ve familiarized ourselves with a multitasking function we can achieve our ultimate goal, increasing our productivity. For instance the workplace overemphasizes multitasking to point that it’s a must needed job requirement on job applications (Otto). Multitasking is so important in our society that it becomes a necessity and often at times is inadvertently promoted in classrooms, tell-all books or celebrity biographies. You know the ones where someone famous talks about balancing work, parenting, school and successfully fulfilling their dreams. That misconception seems to have brought on the mentality of “if they can do it, I can do it too.” And in most cases we can’t because some pieces of the puzzle were missing in the tell all.

Also Glenn does not discuss how age factor plays a role on multitasking. In (Willingham) found that younger people are better at multitasking do their excess of working-memory capacity as compared to adults. In fact Willingham, Daniel T credits younger people’s working memory capacity due to their ability to have good mental control.