Scientists Study the Obvious, Conclude the Obvious

by eastvanray | August 25, 2009 at 10:53 am

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Wow! This is hardly a ground-breaking survey! Geez, let me think this one out....if people try to do more than one thing at a time their divided attention results in poorer performance than if they dedicated themselves to only one task at a time. Did they really neeed to study that. Isn't it just common sense? I guess the saying is true "Common sense is not that common anymore."

Media multitaskers can't do anything well, study shows ReutersAugust 25, 2009

Multitaskers of media activities such as watching YouTube, writing e-mails and talking on the phone are not very good at any of their tasks, according to a Stanford University report Monday.

Researchers who published the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said the results surprised them. They were looking for the secret to good media multitaskers but instead found broad-based incompetence.

"Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking. The more you do it, the worse you get,'' said Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass.

Compulsive media multitaskers are worse at focusing their attention, worse at organizing information and worse at quickly switching between tasks, the Stanford scientists wrote.

After testing about 100 Stanford students, the scientists concluded that chronic media multitaskers have difficulty focusing and are not able to ignore irrelevant information.