“If You Can Avoid It, Don’t Multitask” --What?

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“If You Can Avoid It, Don’t Multitask” --What?

9/22/2004

By Terry Calhoun

Performance was measured as a function of whether the tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, the rules were simple or complex, and visual cues were present or absent about which tasks should be performed. Task alternation yielded switching-time costs that increased with rule complexity but decreased with task cuing. These factor effects were additive, supporting a model of executive control that has goal-shifting and rule-activation stages for task switching. It appears that rule activation takes more time for switching from familiar to unfamiliar tasks than for switching in the opposite direction.

Now, read these excerpts from the first two paragraphs of the press release:

New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking, key findings as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing (and increasingly, more than one complicated thing) at a time.

Now try to find where the press release language reflects the study. Hmm. Well, there’s clearly even less relationship if you read the whole 34-page article, which I have now. Twice. Carefully.

The initial research was aimed at learning more about how the brain controls task shifting and the concomitant application of rules for thinking. And the data was collected in 1992 and 1993, years before the trends that we’ve seen in using IT for multitasking were visible to many researchers--many of whom by their nature likely avoid multitasking when at all possible.

Sure enough, the researchers found that there were some costs in terms of time used by your brain to manage your shift from one task to another. Not exactly a surprise, but not really a finding about multitasking and “efficiency” on the job, either.

A few dozen undergraduates at the University of Michigan were given ten arithmetic problems to solve. When the problems were all one kind--say, all multiplication or all division--it took them about a minute to get the answers. If the problems were mixed--some division and some multiplication--it took them about 15-20 seconds longer.

The abstract reflects those findings, as d'es the paper. The APA press release and the media interviews by the scientists reflect a whole lot more, however. What appears to be professional speculation is not qualified as such and becomes--in articles that people read--statements about the latest scientific research showing that “Multitasking is Counterproductive,” “Multitasking Creates Health Problems,” Multitasking Makes You Stupid,” and “The Thief of Time: Multitasking is Inefficient.”

My bet is that 95 percent (or more) of the journalists who wrote or spoke about this paper and multitasking read and understood that sentence, but not much if anything more. Most probably never even followed the hyperlink to the full article, and if they did, they probably skimmed the front page and went somewhere else as they felt their eyes glazing over.

What’s all this got to with information technology and higher education, and why is it here in IT Trends? Well, at the NLII and EDUCAUSE meetings I’ve attended, and at the Syllabus conferences, too, I’ve noticed and been made to feel at home by the number of people using their laptops and PDAs to multitask in the middle of seminars and presentations.

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