The world that surrounds us today is filled with distractions. The vast amount of devices we have to take us away from the subject that is right in front of us plays a large role in these distractions. With the popularity of such devices increasing, people think their multitasking skills increase as well, however that is incredibly untrue. Studies show that it is virtually impossible to do two things simultaneously, which is incredibly opposite from popular belief.
Instead of multitasking, people are actually just shifting their attention very quickly from one thing to another. A study at the University of Michigan showed this to be true when they put a number of subjects underneath an MRI machine to monitor their brain waves when looking at two different things at once. The image they were given to look at was a two digit number that had a different color for each digit. Brain waves showed that instead of seeing green and red at the same time, the subjects would see green, pause, and then see the red number before putting the two together. The part of the brain that is in control of this function are the frontal lobes, which control executive decision making.
Evolution can play a large part in why humans can multitask. For example, if a person is hunting, they are able to keep track of both where their friends are also hunting, and where the animals they are trying to hunt are. Most animals would not be able to perform this task. Despite the fact that humans are not actually simultaneously keeping track of these two things, evolution has allowed us to progress to transferring between these two ideas at such a rapid rate.
Despite the progress humans have made in this ability, studies show we still tend to over estimate how well we can transfer our attention between two objects. A very relevant subject would be texting while driving. Today, 23% of car crashes have been caused while people are using their phone. 5 seconds is a minimum amount of time a person can look at their phone, and then look back up at the road. While this does not seem completely significant, if a person if traveling 55 miles per hour, this equates to an entire football field without looking at the road. Statistics and research like this should have people think before they try to multitask. Whether texting while driving, or simply watching the television while doing homework, these studies prove it may be more efficient to simply do one task at once, instead of constantly trying to split your attention between doing two things at once.
Sources: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
http://www.textinganddrivingsafety.com/texting-and-driving-stats/
An article on NPR entitled “Think You’re Multitasking” described the situations that chefs have to deal with. Jon Hamilton, a contributor for NPR, said that, “you must be able to keep a half-dozen orders in your head while cracking eggs, flipping pancakes, working the counter, and refilling coffee cups.” He continued to say that people begin to think they can multitask because they get very good at doing the same tasks over again and again. A neuroscientist Earl Miller said, “The brain is very good at deluding itself.” He concludes by saying that one is “not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly.”
I consider myself a person that multitask a lot, I thought it was helping my and that by doing everything that I had to do at the same time I was actually saving time. It turns out that its not true and I think your post helped me figure that out. I wanted to see if there was a video or something about multitasking and I found a test to show people that multitasking is really taking up time of their lives instead of making everything faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCeGKxz3Q8Q