Research on Multi tasking

To better understand executive control, as wee as the human capacity for multitasking and its limitations, Rubeinstein, Meyer and Evans studied patterns in the amoumnts of time lost whemn people switched repeatedly between two tasks of varying complexity amd familiarity. In four experiements, young adult subjects switched between different takss , such as solving math problems or classifying geometric objects. The researchers measured subjects' speed of performance as a function of whether the successive tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, and whether the rules for performing them were simple or complex.

The measurements revealed that for all tyhpes of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of tasks , so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs also were greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar.
They got up to speed faster when they switched to tasks they knew better, an observation that may lead to inte4rfaces designed to help overcome people's innate cognitive limitations.

Next time: If it is so harmful to your brain, what can you do!!