One of the most obvious occurrences that we experience daily is shifting from task to task. Our everyday life requires it in every aspect. We as humans, are one of the most multi-talented species in the world, going from eating a sandwich, watching television, interacting with other individuals and so much more. These tasks can be simple since it’s an acquired behavior done day to day. The surprise does not come from the individual’s ability to learn from the acquired behavior. Instead, it comes from the individuals ability to be able to multi-task effectively and efficiently during the process. Why does this happen? More importantly, how does this happen? Others have noticed this particular phenomenon in other forms of daily life and have conducted experiments to figure …show more content…
That being said, in studies conducted it has been found that the control processes that reconfigure mental resources for a change of task, requires subjects to switch frequently among a small set of simple tasks (Monsell, 2003). These subject’s responses are substantially slower and, usually, more error-prone immediately after a task switch, causing the error rate to be higher when switching tasks or lower when non-switching, but would not be eliminated entirely (Monsell, 2003). Other experimenters concluded that giving the subject’s advanced knowledge of the upcoming task and given the time to prepare for it, caused the switch cost to be usually reduced (Monsell, 2003). Since studies have concluded this other experimenters decided to take in other variables and see how the switch cost is affected, whether before the stimulus onset (endogenous control) or after the stimulus onset (exogenous control) (Monsell,
Reynolds, G. S. (1961). Relativity of response rate and reinforcement frequency in the multiple schedule. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 4, 179-184.
Washington: American Psychiatric Press Inc. Nairne, J. S., Smith, M. S., and Lindsay, D. S. (2001). Psychology: The Adaptive Mind. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson Learning.
Weiten, W., Dunn, D.S., Hammer, E.Y. (2011). Psychology Applied to Modern Life. Belmont, Ca. Cengage Learning
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
Lepage, M. & Richer, F. (2000). Frontal brain lesions affect the use of advance information during response planning. Behavioral Neuroscience, 1034-1040.
The Natural Human Learning Process is a process that the brain goes through when learning different skills. According to Dr. Smilkstein’s this process is divided into six steps. The first step is the motivation stage. This step is when the brain begins to gain the desire to do something for many different reasons. Sometimes, she says, we learn things because we feel as though “we have too”. The second step is the beginning practice step. This is the trial and error stage. The third step is the advanced practice stage, where you start doing the action over and over. The fourth step is the skillfulness stage, where you are starting to get really good at what you’re doing. You become more confident about your skill in this stage. The skill starts to become natural because the skill has been tried over continuously. The fifth step is the refinement stage. In this step you start to experiment with doing different things. For example the ingredients might change if the skill is cooking. In the last step mastery, is when the skill is able to be taught to others (Smilkstein).
Distracted driving: the practice of driving a motor vehicle while engaged in another activity. Anything besides focusing on the road can be considered distracted driving. Most people would think that the only real distraction while driving is the use of a cell phone, however, that is entirely untrue. There are people that give the term, distracted driving, a whole new meaning. People do everything from fixing their makeup to shaving while driving in their cars. Distracted driving is one of the leading causes of car crashes in the United States.
An example through real life is the activity we did in class. The activity was listen to your partner’s story without disturbing and being able to tell the story back later without any issues. We all know how hard it is to listen to the person we are listening to without disturbing them. Through this activity I learned that it feels weird in the beginning listening to someone without disturbing them. This is because we want to make sure we have all the details analyzed in our process of thought. However, by time it is possible to know how to proceed in this
The study of anxiety and automation took a great extent in the twentieth century giving basis to different theories and opinions. Current study is based on differences between anxious and non- anxious subjects on their performance in solving simple and complex tasks before and after a learning phase and automation. Current study wants to draw attention to the fact that automation diminishes the impact of anxiety on performance, especially in solving complex tasks by reducing the level of attention and the depth of conscious processing and by avoiding the sub activation of the units in the working memory involved in complex tasks.
Strayer, D. L., & Watson, J. M. (2012). Supertaskers and the multitasking brain. Scientific American Mind, 23(1), 22-29.
Pashler,H.(1990) Graded Capacity-Sharing in Dual-Task Interference?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994, Vol. 20, No. 2. 330-342
I am the kind of person who likes to be in an environment that doesn’t change to often. I’m not a fan of jumping into something new. Adapting to change is one of the hardest things for me and it is the one thing that I need to work on the most. Change happens all around us every day and I need to learn how to deal with it. Change can be good. Change can be bad. It’s just what I’m going to have to work on to become a better leader.
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.
Lieberman, D. A. (2000). Learning, Behavior and Cognition (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. [Chapter 7]
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.