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The myth of multitasking Christine Rosen
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Multi-tasking is doing more than one task at a time and the average human will, in some way or form, do this throughout the day and many times without even knowing they are doing it. For the purposes of this exercise, I am multitasking by working on this exercise, watching a movie on the television, listening to music, and keeping up with lunch on the stove. Multi-tasking is a must in order to survive and is as easy as being able to breath, eat, think, and walk at the same time. Many jobs as well as raising children involve being able to multi-task. My job as an Army paralegal causes me to do many things at once and be able to keep track of many actions coming in and going out of my office. If I lose focus for a moment in these tasks, it
As human beings, it is becoming more of a second nature to us to multi-task. As the world is technologically advancing more and more every day, there are becoming more distractions. Social-media is flourishing, reality TV show ratings are going up, and humans even unintentionally check their phones every two minutes. In this day of age, multi-tasking is proving to promote inefficiency rather than productivity.
Tugend goes over the impact of interruptions on work. She states that it takes a long time to get refocused after an interruption. Tugend notes that work gets done quicker when a person endures interruptions, but the work quality suffers greatly because of the increase in stress. She states that while other people are interruptions, the biggest interruption is ourselves (Tugend 717). Along with that, human attention spans are decreasing making interruption much more likely to happen. The time people spend on an activity before switching is not enough to really get into it (Tugend 717).
When we are doing a certain task we may get a text or we have to check our social media because of our addiction to it. These things cause us to drift off from what we actually are focused on. Sometimes we may be doing something, like reading, and our mind will subconsciously drift off onto another topic, like what our plans are for tomorrow. Some people do believe though that if the two tasks you are doing use different sections of the brain that it is all right to multitask. The example Restak gave of this was “an example of the principle of cerebral geography: The brain works at it’s best with the activation of different, rather than identical, brain areas. That’s why doodling while talking on the telephone isn’t a problem for most people, since speaking and drawing use different brain areas. But writing a thank you note while on the phone results in mental strain because speaking and writing share some of the same brain circuitry” (Restak 422). While this may be true, we still are not dedicating all of our time to just one specific task we are working
Today we live in a society where everything is seconds away from us. With the advances and affordability of quality technology, you would be hard pressed to find someone without a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, possibly all at the same time. Because of the accessibility we find that, in our tech-savvy culture, multitasking has not just become an art form of sorts, but rather an expectation. In the article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend sets out to explore the idea that although multitasking appears to show productivity, it could be doing the opposite. Throughout her article, Tugend uses studies done by neurologists and psychologists to show how in a world that sees multitasking as an expectation it has actually made us less efficient. She proposes, through studies, that although you might be working on multiple tasks it is as if you’re playing tennis with multiple balls (Tugend, 725).
Many would remark that multitasking is a skill that can be trained like all others. However, a lot of neuroscience has went into proving that multitasking is a myth altogether. The article “The Myth of Multitasking” is written by Nancy K. Napier for Psychology today is here to debunk the myth of the brain’s capability to multitask. The article states that the brain is incapable of doing two things at once. Instead, the way that we fool ourselves into thinking that we can multitask is how quickly our brain switches from one task to another. Our brains can’t perform tasks simultaneously as our focus is a narrow beam. So, to compensate for this, our brain switches between these two tasks very quickly, almost as if we are doing them at the same
Performing well in at certain tasks and retaining information both require a high level of attention. Multitasking requires that this attention be divided amongst different tasks. As a result, the some of the attention used for a certain task must now be used for other tasks, which affects the factors needed to complete it. Referring to an experiment that was discussed earlier, Wieth and Burns (2014) stated that even with the reward, the promise of incentive could not override the limits of people’s attention. Retaining information requires undivided attention. The key word is ‘undivided.’ According to this experiment, it is nearly impossible to have the same high level of focus while working on multiple tasks that a person would while working on one task. Once someone has reached the end of their attention span, their performance begins to falter. In a final experiment involving media multitasking and attention, Ralph, Thomson, Cheyne, and Smilek (2014) stated that multitasking can lead to mind wandering and lapses in attention, which distracts people from their tasks. These results show that once their attention is divided, it can lead to distractions and difficulty completing different tasks. It is difficult to complete one assignment while focusing on several others at the same time. Multitasking affects the attention needed for a task, which can affect everything
This experimental investigation has to do with how human’s attention work. It is based on a replication of the well-known “Stroop Effect” carried out on 1935 by John Ridley Stroop. The aim of this experiment was to demonstrate how hard it is for a person’s attention to be divided in different tasks, by making the participants read a series of three stimuli which consisted of: 1) words of colors in black ink, 2) words of colors in their actual font color, and 3) color words with different ink, where the participant read the font instead of the word present. The research hypothesis supposed that selective attention is as easy to be performed visually as well as audibly. The controlled variable of the experiment were the black ink color words, while the second stimuli was considered to be experimental variable. There were two independent variables that were the color words corresponding to their color and the number of mistakes each participant made in each category. The dependent variable was the third stimuli, where the participant read its font rather than the word presented. The experiment was completed within a group of sixteen participants from an age range of 13-16 (eight girls and eight boys in total). The average time and mistakes in each variable was the following: 9.28 seconds with no mistakes, 9.53 seconds with one mistake, and 25.53 seconds and an average of two mistakes. In conclusion, the observations were that it took much more time in the last stimuli, which was the one that divided attention into two tasks. Implication findings would be the modicum amount of participants in the experiment.
making people’s way of multi tasking. It results to divided attention, which might make them ineffective. For instance, when the teenagers are involved in many activities along doing homework, they will do their homework inappropriately. According to traditional practices, people did one task at a time. Students also did their homework without any other distraction. The culture of multi tasking is instilling partial attention in people. They cannot pay full attention to one thing. They do multi thing , This is why even student cannont make good text using they phones and have bad grammer
The phenomenon of ‘Divided attention’ is the idea that an individual has the ability to divide their attention between two or more tasks (multi- tasking). Focused attention models such as Broadbent’s theory, Treisman’s theory and Deutsch and Deutsch model explains how all our inputs are focused on one task at a time, however it is clear from looking at everyday life that we are able to divide our attention, successfully being able to complete more than one task at the same time.
Multitasking has a long research history (e.g., McQueen, 1917) with many arguments concerning the benefits or lack thereof. While authors (e.g.Britton & Tesser, 1991) may describe multitasking as a potential time management strategy, others (e.g. Pashler, 1994) find results of studies to suggest there are limitations to a person’s ability to dual task. Although we find studies that display results that indicate multitasking is a hindrance, other studies struggle to show multitasking to pose a positive or negative.
Multitasking negatively affects learning. MORE. Foerde, Knowlton, and Poldrack (2006) observed the effects of distraction on learning.
Also, it suggests that there are other approaches to task completions depending on individual preference such as single-tasking. As indicated by the article, there is a need for further research to support the claims about multitasking. This makes me wonder if there are more factors that contribute to the ineffectiveness of multitasking aside from the conditions stated in the article. For instance, does one’s genetic play a role in one’s ability to multitask effectively. Also, I wonder why the article did not emphasize a very crucial factor for productivity which is time management. Aside from being efficient and accurate, I would believe an individual needs to make proper use of time to increase the gains of
The presence of accumulated stress and heavy work load on the brain automatically bring about the student or the employee inability to multitask; knowing fully well that multitasking is one essential key to excellence.
The popular belief that multitasking is efficient, and the new-age generation is hard wired for multitasking, is highly misguided. Truth is, effective multitasking is an oxymoron. It’s not uncommon to see a person texting while walking down the street, listening to music while doing homework, or staring at a computer screen with multiple tabs and windows open. It’s hard not to multitask, given the amount of work people have to do and the non-stop information being thrown at them. People will do it as a force of habit; they think it will help them accomplish more tasks in a shorter time period. More often than not, they find it being the complete opposite. The brain can only process one activity at a time; instead, it switches gears, which takes time, reduces accuracy, distracts, and hinders creative thoughts. So, the real question should be: is multitasking actually worth the time? No, multitasking negatively affects people in all aspects of their life.
Alzahabi, Reem, and Mark W. Becker. "The Association Between Media Multitasking, Task-Switching, And Dual-Task Performance." Journal Of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception & Performance 39.5 (2013): 1485-1495. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.