It has been seen in today’s world that if one does multitasking, then that person is heralded and paraded as a “hero”, who is a symbol of “productivity and efficiency”. So, this blog tries to uncover the illusion of multitasking and the impacts it has on the cognition and psychological reality related to effective multitasking.
Multitasking was first used in computer engineering to refer to those computers that were able to process several tasks concurrently at the same time. In the human context however, we can see that it refers to the ability to concurrently do two or more tasks together which also means switching different tasks among each other i.e. task switching or leaving one task to do the other. In recent studies, it has been revealed that we tend to inflate our ability to do some task and our brain does not have the architecture to perform two or more tasks together at the same time. The brain systems involved in executive control and sustained attention tend to determine our ability to multitask. This includes the frontoparietal network, dorsal attention network, and ventral attention network (Madore P.K., Wagner A.D., 2019).
A study which was conducted by some researchers in the year 2018, talked about how engaging in multitasking can reduce the academic performance of an individual. The research suggests that media multitasking interferes with the working memory and attention of an individual, which in turn leads to negative effects on GPA, test performance, recall during exams, etc., leading to a decline in the general ability to focus on the different things in life. These effects were mostly shown when the students were attending their class lectures in their respective colleges (May E.K., & Elder D.A., 2018). Another study which was conducted by Robert Rogers as well as Stephen Monsell talked about how people who switch between two tasks every two or more trials, there was a slowdown in the task-switch than on the task-repeat trials. This led to an increase in the time intervals between two different trials, but the cost of switching tasks had increased. Similarly, another paper which was published by Rubinstein, Evans, and Jeffrey Meyer talked about how the participants who had switched between different tasks had faced more loss in time, and as the tasks became more complex, it was becoming increasingly difficult for different people over there to complete their tasks (APA). This gives us enough evidence that multi-tasking is something that is not easy and something that our brain cannot handle.
Therefore, to conclude, we must do one kind of work and then move on to another which can help prevent waste of time.
References:
1. Madore K.P. & Wagner D.A. (2019). The multi costs of multitasking. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075496/
2. Albany edu (n.d.). Human multitasking. https://www.albany.edu/spatial/WebsiteFiles/TimeManagement/single-multi-tasking/human-multitasking_wiki.pdf
3. May K.E.& Elder D.A. (2018). Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance. https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-018-0096-z#:~:text=The%20research%20indicates%20that%20media,self%2Dregulation%2C%20and%20efficiency.
4. APA (n.d.). Multitasking: Switching costs. https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking
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