Multitasking Good or Bad? Not always Bad!!

Multitasking Good or Bad? Not always Bad!!

Do you do multiple things together with equal efficiency? Watching T.V and cooking and talking on phone—simultaneously? Do you think multi tasking can increase your stress level, well the study suggest that our obsession with multiple forms of media is not necessarily all bad news. The latest study is conducted by Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their work shows that those who frequently use different types of media at the same time appear to be better at integrating information from multiple senses - vision and hearing in this instance - when asked to perform a specific task. This may be due to their experience of spreading their attention to different sources of information while media multitasking. Their study is published online in Springer's Psychonomic Bulletin & Review- Medical express

Using more than one form of media or technology simultaneously is harmful and can make us less efficient. The detrimental aspects of multitasking had been widely discussed off and on. Today’s E- generation is bound to use multiple medial simultaneously that could be instant messaging, music, web surfing, e-mail, online videos, computer games or social networking. The detrimental aspects of multitasking ranges from severe stress and rage in adults to learning problems and autism-like behaviour in children.

Research has demonstrated that multitasking could lead to cognitive impairments while performing certain task that involves switching, selective attention and working memory and can make us less efficient.
The experts explain that the human brain doesn’t multi-task like an expert juggler; it switches frantically between tasks like a bad amateur plate-spinner. It requires constant efforts, doing just  two or three things at once which puts far more demand on our brains compared with if we did them one after another.
Multi-tasking is a significant reason why we are witnessing epidemics of rage, believes Dr Alan Keen, a behavioural scientist at Australia’s Central Queensland University. 

This type of cognitive impairment may be due to the fact that multi taskers tend to pay attention to various sources of information available in their environment, without sufficient focus on the information most relevant to the task at hand.

But does this cognitive style have any advantages? Lui and Wong's study explored the differences between media multitaskers' tendency and ability to capture information from seemingly irrelevant sources. In particular, they assessed how much two different groups (frequent multitaskers and light multitaskers) could integrate visual and auditory information automatically.

StudyA total of 63 participants, aged 19-28 years, took part in the experiment. They completed questionnaires looking at their media usage - both time spent using various media and the extent to which they used more than one at a time. The participants were then set a visual search task, with and without synchro-nous sound, i.e. a short auditory pip, which contained no information about the visual target's location, but indicated the instant it changed color.

On average, participants regularly received information from at least three media at the same time. Those who media multitasked the most tended to be more efficient at multisensory integration. In other words, they performed better in the task when the tone was present than when it was absent. They also performed worse than light media multitaskers in the tasks without the tone. It appears that their ability to routinely take in information from a number of different sources made it easier for them to use the unex-pected auditory signal in the task with tone, leading to a large improvement in performance in the pres-ence of the tone.

 "Although the present findings do not demonstrate any causal effect, they highlight an interesting possibility of the effect of media multitasking on certain cognitive abilities, multisensory integration in particular. Media multitasking may not always be a bad thing."

As per research multitasking can make you less efficient, however, if you must do Here is how? Paul Dux, a neuroscientist at Australia’s Queensland University suggest few tips to perform multitasking more efficiently at daily mail as below,...

• DON’T do it in the afternoon. The multi-tasking brain generally struggles hardest in the afternoon. Post-lunch fatigue, added to the strain of multi-tasking, often causes overload. Scientists are building machines to predict when our brains are best able to multi-task.

• MEDITATE. Brain scans of non-religious Westerners who meditate show they have increased development in regions associated with memory and attention. U.S. research shows meditation makes brains more efficient at paying attention, so there is brain power spare when doing two tasks at once. 

• PRACTISE multi-tasking with simple tasks. We can improve our performance when the jobs are easy.

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