You have dual monitors on your desk, or maybe even 3 or 4 - you think you're pretty fly... right? I mean what can't you do? Need to watch a torrented episode of the Office, while checking your email, and surf t3chh3lp at the same time? That's no problem for you! Or is it?
"Increasingly, people who are looking at their computer screen are frequently watching TV, listening to the radio, maybe reading print media, chatting, texting," said Cliff Nass, a co-author on the study from Stanford University.
"On the computer you could be emailing while you have three chats going on while you're playing World of Warcraft. If you look at classical psychology textbooks, people cannot multitask - but if you walk around on the street, you see lots of people multitasking," he told BBC News.
According to a study reported on by the BBC, there are two types of multi-taskers: high and low 'taskers. Those in the high category were some who consumed two or more different types of media at the same time regularly. The low were those who weren't use to that sort of thing. Each group was put to do certain tasks, many at a time and were graded on how well they could handle all of them.
The results:
"The shocking discovery of this research is that [high multitaskers] are lousy at everything that's necessary for multitasking," Professor Nass said.
"The irony here is that when you ask the low multitaskers, they all think they're much worse at multitasking and the high multitaskers think they're gifted at it."
There you have it. So think hard next time whether you need that 3rd or 4th monitor.
[Via BBC News]
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Brandon Davenport
