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Essays on multitasking and its effects
Essays on multitasking and its effects
Positive effect of multitasking
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Multitasking, doing more than one thing at a time, is something we do every day without even realizing it. Multitasking can be something as simple as writing an essay and listening to music, or singing while jogging. It is beneficial and can make your everyday life easier. It can not only save you time but also help increase your focus. Multitasking is something we do constantly in order to accomplish our tasks. One way multitasking can help your everyday life is by saving time. Rather than spending hours doing every task separately you can “combine tasks so you can more quickly get everything done” (source 3). When you do everything one at a time you can end up spending hours, if not days, to complete the task at hand. If you multitask it will be solved in no time. In the end you will have free time to be with your family or go out with friends. Multitasking can save you a great deal of time giving you the opportunity to do what you love. …show more content…
Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong at The Chinese University of Hong Kong held a study where 63 participants needed to identify a given shape on a computer screen with similar shapes that changed color. At the same time, researchers would be playing a tone that indicated when the color of the shapes would change. Studies showed that “ participants who media multitask most frequently were far more effective at multi-sensory integration” (source 4). The people who multitask frequently did not get affected by the tone, in fact it helped them find the target faster. Multitasking drastically increases your focus and keeps your eye on the goal
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.
In the article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend centralizes around the negative effects of multitasking. She shows that often with multitasking, people tend to lose focus, lack work quality, have an increase in stress, and in the end she gives a solution to all these problems. Tugend conveys her points by using understandable language, a clear division of subjects, and many reliable sources, making her article cogent.
Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to a large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study “Your Brain on Computers” reports that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, is claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. (Crovitz 353) As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distr...
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
In the article,“Multitasking is actually kind of a problem for kids and adults” by Hayley Tsukayama the author went into detail about how parents and their children view their personal media habits. One of the ways that the parents and children viewed their media habits as was feeling the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately. “More than 1,200 parents and teens surveyed, 48 percent of parents and 72 percent of teens said they felt the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately, almost guaranteeing distractions throughout the day” (Tsukayama). This article can be connected to “The Epidemic of Media Multitasking While Learning” both of the articles discussed the different factors of media multitasking among individuals. The article from The Washington Post website gave great insight on multitasking and rather it is bad for students when it comes to learning. I believe that the issue being discussed is very relevant because if students are easily distracted by technology while in their learning environment it results in them not learning
Though there are some positive effects, the adverse impact of technology on education has been extraordinary. The technology community has worked hard to bring useful technology into our classrooms, all with good intentions to broaden our knowledge. With these good intentions also came about unwanted side effects such as distraction and disruption in the classroom. I can clearly remember many of my teachers yelling at us to put our cell phones, iPods, and iTouch phones away especially during lecture and exams. The yelling was not without just cause, students cheated with their devices along with updating their Facebook pages during class too.
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.
Multitasking with non-course material results in a student’s attention being diverted from the course material that is being taught. This can result in errors in memory for the student and also a more difficult time learning the information outside of the classroom (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.1). The University of Vermont completed a study in order to determine the impacts of multitasking with a laptop during a university lecture. Through the experiment they were able to determine that “students with a high [and long] frequency of software multitasking during lectures will exhibit lower academic performance than students with a low [and short] frequency of software multitasking” (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.6). This shows that repeated and lengthy multitasking with technology in particular laptops during lecture times can cause extremely negative results in a students academic performances and
Technology has been always improving over the decades, and now it has improved to the point where it’s a part of a human being’s life. People can’t imagine living without technology anymore nowadays, and especially college students who are always on their phones and laptops during lectures. That leads to what is known as multitasking, which is the ability to take care of more than one task at the same time. Multitasking has been popularized by students, and specifically college students who think that they are actually successful at doing it. Unfortunately, according to Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, after testing students who think they are brilliant at multitasking, results showed that they are terrible at every aspect of multitasking; consequently, it is not successful.
Multitasking involves you working as efficiently as possible and doing multiple things at the same time. This is commonly used when someone is behind on something and does not have a lot of time. When I do this however I don't do it for that reason but instead I use this for me to get my work done early. Moving around tend to keep the focus where it matters and reduce the amount of time you spend giving information. You do not
Multitasking is something that I constantly do, but am not very good at. As I am typing this there is an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that I am supposedly watching, the phone is right next to me so I can check the news, in what I know will be about two minutes, and my dog is bringing me his ball to play fetch with him. I am terrible at concentrating on one thing alone, but that does not mean I do not pay attention to each thing individually. Of course, I will not remember what this specific episode of the show is about, but I know this response will be exactly as I want it to be, as I will read it over once I am done. Is this efficient? Or has it helped me complete tasks to the best of my ability? I do not think I can truly know if the tasks I complete are to the best of my ability, but if my GPA and grades are a direct product of my ability to multitask, then I would say I do rather well.
Reduces Stress: Many are stressed as a result of too much to do in very little time and become so overwhelmed mentally to the point of even becoming physically ill but with good time management skill, you know what to do and how long to do it for. Optional tasks not completed same day can be moved next day task list.
Introduction Change is the only constant entity of life. The world is ever so changing, demanding a certain level of flexibility from an individual in order to adequately adapt to, and conquer daily challenges. These challenges encountered by an individual in their day-to-day activities make them vulnerable to performing multiple tasks concurrently in an attempt to save time and resources. One such challenge that resonates with individuals is multitasking.
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.