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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> In another test, students were asked whether they were seeing an even or odd number or a vowel or a consonant when shown a letter and a number simultaneously. A prompt asked students to answer either the letter question or the number question.
Frequent multi-taskers took longer to answer than lighter multi-taskers, indicating they had a more difficult time switching between numbers-based and letters-based tasks.
"This was shocking," Ophir said. "You'd think multi-taskers would be better at task-switching, but they were slower."
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The reasons for the decreased cognitive control are unclear, Ophir said. Researchers cannot say if the multi-tasking itself damages cognitive control -- and if so, how much multi-tasking it takes for damage to occur -- or if those who tend to multi-task with media have less cognitive control to begin with.
"Either way, the prescription is to multi-task less," Ophir said. "The big take-away from me is to try to build periods of focus, to create times you are really focused on one thing."
Media multi-tasking includes doing one or more activities at once, including e-mailing, surfing the Web, writing on a computer, watching TV, texting, playing video games, listening to music or talking on the phone.
"It seems from our survey that everybody is doing some amount of multi-tasking," Ophir said. "It's hard to find people that don't multi-task. But it's all about intensity."
The findings have implications for today's universities and workplaces, where multi-tasking has become the norm, said Dr. John Lucas, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College.
"There is no free lunch in switching from one task to another," Lucas said. "People multi-task without an awareness that transitioning from one set of responsibilities to another involves some lag time, and when they do switch, the cognitive skills are not going to be as sharp."
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