Multitasking and Attention

‘Media multitasking – or engaging with multiple forms of digital or screen-based media simultaneously, whether they are television, texting or Instagram – may impair attention in young adults, worsening their ability to later recall specific situations or experiences.’

The study suggests media multitasking reduces attention span in young adults.

Not exactly the latest and most exciting study. However, what it does affirm is that our gradually decreasing attention span seem to correlate with our growing tendency to media multitask.

When I read this paper a couple weeks ago, I thought it merely confirmed what we knew all along, that multitasking is bad for efficiency, it’s bad for productivity. However, a deep dive into the subject suggested that multitasking may not be all that bad. The subject’s ability to multitask and be productive has to do with the user’s perception on multitasking itself.

The term multitasking was first introduced in 1965, in an IBM paper describing the capabilities of the IBM system 360. It has since been applied to human tasks.

Multitask refers to the ability to juggle different work activities and shifting attention from one task to another. It is however, useful to further define the term more concretely. When we talk about multitasking, we refer to tasks that are a bit more complicated than ‘autopilot’ tasks. For example, driving and talking on the phone; or replying to email while your mum is asking about the grocery list.

When people multitask, they switch from one task to another. This means they have to disengage the first task, switch onto the second task, identify the parameters of the task, disengage second task, switch onto first task, identify the parameters of the task. The cycle repeats. Our brain is able to switch so quickly that we think we are doing two things at once. In the end, we do not actually achieve much on either task at a time.

Since 1960s, psychologists have conducted experiments on the nature and limits of human multitasking. The general finding is there appears to be a slowing in responses to the second appearing stimulus (second task). They attributed this to the refractory period effect, almost like a processing bottleneck preventing the brain from working on certain key aspect of both tasks at the same time. The part of the brain believed to be most severely affected is – planning of actions and retrieval of information from memory. This effect is congruent with real life observations, there is often a lag time between tasks, having to recalibrate and find the bearings, before proceeding.

A poll result on multitasking found that 93% of respondents indicated that they believe they could multitask better or as well as an average person.

This result is worrying and potentially problematic considering how many researches indicate that multitasking is detrimental to performance.

Another study in 2017 by Srna, Schrift and Zauberman, titled ‘Multitasking: perception and performance’ suggest otherwise.

This study investigate that the malleability of multitasking perceptions, and how the mere illusion of multitasking might impact enjoyment, engagement and performance on the task.

Multitasking is a matter of perception.

Multitasking is context dependent – whether the individual perceive himself as multitasking or single tasking. The study had a group of participants work on two word puzzles. First group was told that both puzzles were from the same study; second group was told that the puzzles are for two separate studies. Results found that the second group felt that they had to ‘multitask’ whereas the first group perceived it as ‘single tasking’.

The mere perception of multitasking increases persistence and performance.

This time, the participants were framed as single vs multitask. Measures were put into place to make sure that they were framed accordingly. They were then left to work on word puzzles. Results found that the group that was framed to be multitasking worked longer and performed better compared to those in single tasking mindset.

This could be explained in another study.

‘Multitasking framing improves performance because of increased engagement in the tasks.’

When activity is framed as multitasking, switching between the tasks increases arousal more so compared to when the same activity is perceived as single task.

Further study to try to determine if individual’s belief of multitasking being a more difficult task, causing them to gear up toward working on this supposedly difficult activity yielded no substantive suggestion to support the argument.

To conclude, multitasking is not all that bad. Mere perception of multitasking substantially improves performance. While doing more at the same time might hurt performance, doing the same activity but perceiving it as more, improves it.

To be, or not to be.

To multitask, or not to multitask?