The discovery of a ‘bottleneck in the brain’ finally confirmed what many men had suspected for a long time, namely that no one — not even a woman — can do two things at once! The myth of multitasking was laid to rest.
Multitasking causes impaired reaction time in drivers
Writing in the New Scientist, Alison Metlock reported David Strayer’s finding that talk/drive should become the new drink/drive for all drivers, male and female. The problems caused by talking and driving include an impaired reaction time, and hands-free sets for phones do not improve this.
In one of his experiments, Strayer and colleagues observed fifty-six thousand drivers approaching an intersection. They found that those on their cell phones were twice as likely to fail to heed the stop signs. In 2010, the National Safety Council in the USA estimated that 28 percent of all highway deaths and accidents were the result of drivers on their phones. “Our brain can’t handle the overload,” Strayer said. “It’s just not made that way.”
Multitasking lowers IQ score by 10 points
In another experiment, researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London asked two sets of subjects to take IQ tests. One group had to check e-mails and respond to instant messages while taking the test. The second group just sat down and did the test without distractions.
The distracted group scored 10 points lower than the control group. In similar testing conditions, people intoxicated by marijuana scored 8 points lower. So researchers drew attention to their study by noting that “multitasking” is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned.
Multitasking does not save time
The problem, state Horne and Wootton in their book Training Your Brain, is that doing even just two tasks, both very simple, involves negotiating three bottlenecks in your brain:
- Deciding what to give your attention to. This is called the ‘Attention Blink.’
- Holding two sets of information in a short-term memory that is already limited. This is called the ‘Cognitive Limit.’
- Selecting a response to each situation and then deciding which selection to implement first causes a further delay. This is called the ‘Selection Blink.’
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Much recent neuroscience research tells us that the brain doesn’t do tasks simultaneously as we thought (hoped) it might. Instead, we just switch tasks quickly. Each time we move from one action (for example, driving) to the next (for example, talking to someone), there is a stop/start process in the brain.
That start/stop/start process is rough on us:
- Rather than saving time, it costs time (even very small microseconds)
- It’s less efficient
- We make more mistakes
- Over time it can be energy-sapping
Don’t believe this?
Writing for Psychology Today, Nancy K. Napier, Ph.D., recommends you take this test:
- Draw two horizontal lines on a piece of paper
- Now, have someone time you as you carry out the two tasks that follow:
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- On the first line, write:
- I am a great multitasker
- On the second line: write out the numbers 1-20 sequentially, like those below:
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
How much time did it take to do the two tasks? Usually, it’s about 20 seconds.
Now, let’s multitask
Draw two more horizontal lines. This time — and again, have someone time you — write a letter on one line, and then a number on the line below, then the next letter in the sentence on the upper line, and then the next number in the sequence, changing from line to line. In other words, you write the letter “I” and then the number “1” and then the letter “a” and then the number “2” and so on, until you complete both lines.
I a…..
1 2…..
We bet your time is double or more than in the first round.
That’s switch-tasking on something straightforward, but that’s exactly what happens when we attempt to do many things (often more complex) simultaneously.
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