“A new study suggests that people who often do multiple tasks in a variety of media — texting, instant messaging, online video watching, word processing, Web surfing, and more — do worse on tests in which they need to switch attention from one task to another than people who rarely multitask in this way…” http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/25/multitasking.harmful/index.html
Tag: Time Management
Email is as addictive as a slot machine | Technology | The Guardian
Dr Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’… This means that rather than reward an … Continue reading “Email is as addictive as a slot machine | Technology | The Guardian”
NYTimes.com: The Mediocre Multitasker
Breaking news and a shock to the researchers themselves, as it turns out. Originally, the team of researchers, whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were trying to find out what unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking. They’re … Continue reading “NYTimes.com: The Mediocre Multitasker”
businessinsurance.com: Multitasking by drivers raises liability concerns
“A July Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found text messaging is 23 times as dangerous, reaching for an electronic device is 6.7 times as dangerous, and dialing a cell phone is 5.9 times as dangerous as nondistracted driving.”
nydailynews: Stop the multitasking madness! Attempting to do it all can cause neurological damage: studies
“[Professor Russell Poldrack] found that the information the distracted participants studied actually traveled to a different part of the brain than the information the other volunteers studied. Ideally, new information ought to go to the hippocampus, which has the capacity to store and recall information. In distracted volunteers, however, the hippocampus was not fully activated.” … Continue reading “nydailynews: Stop the multitasking madness! Attempting to do it all can cause neurological damage: studies”
