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Does switching have the same effects of multitasking? - ahibba - 2010-05-19
Technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing (and increasingly, more than one complicated thing) at a time. Multitasking - keeping tabs on email, anki, texts, IM chat, the web - is routine among many of us. We know that humans can’t really multitask very successfully - that what we do is switch tracks, and every time we do that there’s a cost, in terms of our efficiency at the task. But what about long-term costs of chronic multitasking or switching?
These scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking:
The costs of multitasking
http://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx
Chronic media multitasking correlated with poor attention
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/multitasking/
How multitasking impedes learning
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060726083302.htm
In one of these studies that looked at the amounts of time lost when people switched repeatedly between two tasks of varying complexity and familiarity, it was found that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks.
These results suggest that executive control involves two distinct, complementary stages: goal shifting ("I want to do this now instead of that") and rule activation ("I'm turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this").
BUT MY QUESTION IS: Does switching really have the same effects of multitasking in the long term?
Does switching have the same effects of multitasking? - nest0r - 2010-05-19
I believe multitasking and 'switching' are considered the same, no? That is, multitasking is really just switching. The research is still out, re: quantifying the effects, though I think the emerging agreements are: multitasking and working memory can be trained, it depends on the information, and people tend to think they can multitask without negative effects or even positive effects when the opposite is (often) true, though see previous comments on multitasking for caveats.
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/08/multi_media_we_don.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716113401.htm
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090715/full/news.2009.690.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1977523,00.html
Bonus: Continuous Partial Attention