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 the field of psychology that have come to a general consensus that student are actually missing out on a lot of information and reflecting weak scores as compared to others who focus on a single tasks.

Throughout studies on multitasking, scholars are still enthralled by the range of individual variations they have found.

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

about.

Glenn also emphasizes that researchers are still uncertain of the relationship between working memory, intelligence and distractibility. Some researchers believe that “more intelligent” people are simply better at controlling their attention while other studies have shown that people don’t learn as well or deeply when they are distracted. For instance, Glenn once again supports the disadvantages of multitasking by summarizing the work of Karin Foered who reported that distraction during learning can be harmful. Fored argued that when incoming information is competing with other stuff, it is encoded in the “habitat memory” part of the brain and when they were instructed they encoded in the declarative system which forms memories that are more flexible and lasting.
Other than disparaging results Glenn has provided on cognitive and memory task. Glenn has provided experiments conducted by David Meyer on how multitasking degrades what people hear and remember. By instructing his student to not take notes in class and focus more on listening than writing or typing which believes proves as distraction. Though not all researchers agree with the study Glenn indulges on the concern the multimedia multitasking may be destructive to a student’s capacity for reasoning.

Glenn’s focus on the harmfulness of multitasking negates the reason as to why multitasking seems to be a necessity in our environment. Though he addresses the important components that are associated with our working memory capacity, he does not why we multitask or better what are the misconceptions we have both multitasking.

There is a misconception about multitasking that Glenn fails to address that could partially be related to the industrialization of society.

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.

He hypothesizes that people who are lacking mental control choose to multitask more often than most. This he relates to perception we can do two things simultaneously without cost.

Thought the ideal of multitasking is to enable people to achieve more and experience activities, engaging in multiple demanding activities all at once may be cognitively and physically taxing. In an article (Becker) regression analyses revealed that increased media multitasking was associated with higher depression and social anxiety symptoms. Moreover, there are variations of adverse effects to multitasking that over long periods can lead to chronic health problem or musculoskeletal disorders for instance constant use of computers within the classroom setting could result in students become more prone to carpal tunnel syndrome.

The article “Divided Attention” makes the point that due multitasking there are concerns in our working memory capacity when concentrating on multiple tasks. In conclusion David Glenn uses many good studies to prove his point, but he doesn’t inform the audience as to why there is such a heavy emphasis on multitasking in our society, nor the age varies from youth to adulthood nor the possible health risks associated with multitasking for multitasking is more than just a classroom teachers face but a problem in our everyday lives.