Research
on Multitasking
Those who multitask a lot were compared to those who
multitask much less.
Here is a
link to a longer article that I summarize below:
"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked"
Associated Press. Wednesday, August 26, 2009. Research conduced at Stanford
University.
Published in the prestigious Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science, August 25, 2009.
An older article: "Multi-tasking
adversely affects brain's learning, UCLA psychologists report"
A closely
related article: "Study: Multitasking hinders learning:
Distraction-free studying
is more efficient and effective, new brain research suggests"
"What's new is that even if you can learn while distracted,
it
changes how you learn"--making the learning "less efficient and
useful."
The Stanford research showed:
In their
multitaskers
are
ability to ignore irrelevant information
much worse
ability to organize information
worse
memory
equal
ability to switch tasks rapidly
worse
[A surprise! That's
what they do a lot and they were worse at it!]
ability to focus on a task
worse
The Stanford research did not find anything
multitaskers are better at.
What does this mean to you? It means that if you also do
other things while you study, you will not learn as well. Pay full attention to what you
are doing (and don't do e-mail or phone or change music
every few minutes).