People performing multiple tasks simultaneously do not feature more efficiency

As Stanford University surprisingly found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking. Their results were published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research funded by Stanford Major Grant, Volkswagen Grant, Nissan Grant and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant considered 262 college undergraduates. They were divided into high and low multitasking groups and comparing such things as memory, ability to switch from one task to another and being able to focus on a task. When it came to such essential abilities, people who did a lot of multitasking didn't score as well as others, it’s said. In a society that seems to encourage more and more multitasking, the findings have social implications.

The key research question was "Is multitasking causing them to be lousy at multitasking, or is their lousiness at multitasking causing them to be multitaskers?" In the study, the researchers first needed to figure out who are the heavy and light multitaskers.

They gave the students a form listing a variety of media such as print, television, computer-based video, music, computer games, telephone voice or text, and so forth, to detect, which other forms they used at the same time always, often, sometimes or never. The result ranged from an average of about 1.5 media items at the low end to more than four among heavy multitaskers.

Then they tested the abilities of students in the various groups, such as ability to ignore irrelevant information was tested by showing them a group of red and blue rectangles, blanking them out, and then showing them again and asking if any of the red ones had moved. The test required ignoring the blue rectangles. The researchers thought people who do a lot of multitasking would be better at it.

The researchers also tested ability to switch from one task to another by classifying a letter as a vowel or consonant, or a number as even or odd. The high multitaskers took longer to make the switch from one task to the other, that surprised the researchers, believing the need to switch from one thing to another in multitasking.

"They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," lead author Eyal Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."