Habitual Multitaskers Do It Badly

iandoh writes "According to a group of Stanford researchers, people who frequently multitask don't pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. In other words, multitaskers are bad at multitasking. The research team is also studying how to design computer voices for cars that result in safer driving." Reader AliasMarlowe adds "The comparison involved multitasking with a number of attention or context related tests. For the study, multitasking was defined as consuming multiple media sources at once — gaming, TV, IM, email, etc. Interestingly, the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers in these relatively straightforward tests. In self-assessment the multitaskers considered themselves good at it and the single taskers considered themselves bad at it. An extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps, with consequences for business and society."

Comments

When I multitask...

[Kagura]

When I multitask, I can feel the lack of attention that I'm devoting to certain things. For example, when I talk on the phone or text while driving. I mentally feel it.

Re:Makes sense

[crazytisay]

Interesting results, but I find flaw with the tests. If we're really discussing two different types of absorbtion, purely visual and audio/visual, and the tests are made up of entirely visual questions, aren't the researchers tipping the scales in favor of the purely visual non-multitaskers? From the article: "A survey defined two groups: those who routinely consumed multiple media such as internet, television and mobile phones, and those who did not." The ones not consuming multiple media are consuming what? My guess would be books and newsprint, and if so, are they visual learners? How did they control for intelligence level? If the visual group is on average smarter than the audio/visual group, would that not also skew the results? More information is needed and less conjecture.

Re:Makes sense

[Junior J. Junior III]

Conversely, I believe that being forced to multitask by my environment has created attention deficit disorder in me. I can't pay attention to things like I used to, and staying focused is very difficult for me. Even if NOTHING is demanding my attention, I feel like I have a compulsion to switch to a different task every few minutes. It's horrible. I used to be able to focus on a single task for long stretches, sometimes I could read a book for 14 hours or more in a day if I was sufficiently interested in it. Now, every three paragraphs or so, I feel like I want to check my email.