Some surprising truths about multitasking

I first  got started reading about multitasking this morning with this article from the Huffington Post's technology page. Author Daniel Guloti writes about the debilitating effects of multitasking - not on the multitaskers themselves, but on the people around them. While this was mildly interesting, the more fascinating stuff came from the sources Guloti cited in support of his article.

So I followed some of those links and read more about multitasking and its effects on people's brains. One study showed that less than 3% of the population can actually multitask effectively; the researchers were unable to identify what factors separated these individuals. Other research indicated that multitasking led to reduced productivity, increased stress, and led to as much as a 10% drop in IQ while multitasking - this from the Harvard Business Review.

But the article that I found most interesting is from Mail Online, entitled "Is multi-tasking bad for your brain?", by John Naish. Naish cites several sources, including MIT neuroscientists, the Journal of Experimental Psychology, and behavioral and clinical psychologists, who all warn that not only is multitasking not really possible for most people, it is actually harmful.

The article also debunks a couple of myths about multitasking. The first is that women are better at it; the research does not support this. The second untrue myth, and far more important for educators, is that young people who are growing up as multitaskers are better at it, that their brains are being "rewired" for multitasking, and that it's a good thing. Not so, according to Naish. The research cited in the article indicates that:

• the more time students spend on multitasking the harder time they have focusing on a single intellectual task, like reading a book.
• studying while multitasking sends information to parts of the brain where it is difficult to retrieve.
• humans are not built to think this way - we're built to focus.
• multitasking is actually bad for a child's intellectual development.
• children who spend their formative years multitasking lose out on forming interpersonal skills.
• multitasking can rob people of self-awareness and creativity.

So think again if you really believe that the 21st century is all about multitasking, and kids being able to do several things at the same time in your classroom. A lot of the research out there says it isn't so, and that's enough for me to question, research further, and to find out what the truth really is. But as with most research done in trying to understand the human brain and how it works, there are rarely clear-cut answers.