Stanford University researchers published a study showing heavy multitaskers perform badly in a variety of tasks. They don’t focus as well as non-multitaskers. They’re more distractible. They’re weaker at shifting from one task to another and at organizing information. They are, as a matter of fact, worse at multitasking.
Is this really news to anyone, or do some rationalize they do it well? Turns out it really is news. The researchers set out to identify the unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking.
They’re still looking.
“Multitaskers were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study’s investigators. “It was a complete and total shock to me. I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”
The study tested 100 college students rated high or low multitaskers. Experimenters monitored the students’ focus, memory and distractibility with a series of electronic images of different-colored shapes, letters and numbers.
The study’s results were so strong and unexpected that the researchers are planning a series of follow-up experiments. “It keeps me up late at night,” Professor Nass said. “I worry about both the short-term and long-term effects of multitasking. We’re going to be testing the heck out of high and low multitaskers.”
Experts say we don’t really multi-task, but constantly stop one activity to take on another – who can answer an instant message while carrying on a conversation? Is there a tipping point when we recognize we can’t keep up with IM, Twitter, texting and e-mail?
“The core of the problem,” Professor Nass said, is that the multitaskers “think they’re great at what they do; and they’ve convinced everybody else they’re good at it, too.”
Count me in the group that knows it isn’t.
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