Media Psychology: Impact of Multitasking on Human Behavior

STRESSED TO DISTRACTION:

HOW MULTITASKING IS IMPACTING

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN TODAY’S WORLD

Digital Storytelling – Week Ten Final Paper Cynthia Lieberman

Dr. Pamela Rutledge - Fielding University April 4, 2009

FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 1 of 1

STRESSED TO DISTRACTION: HOW MULTITASKING IS IMPACTING

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN TODAY’S WORLD

ABSTRACT

New scientific studies have shown that when humans attempt to do more than one

task at a time (aka multitasking), especially more than one complex task, it can take a toll

on productivity and accuracy. According to psychologists who are studying the effects on

mental processes when people are doing several things simultaneously, the human brain

(unlike machines) is not designed to perform heavy-duty multitasking. This paper will

examine the behavioral impact the influx of task switching is having on families, business,

genders and youth as well as the cost/benefits of multitasking.

MULTITASKING: WHAT, WHY AND HOW DOES IT HAPPEN

As Answers.com defines it, “Multitasking refers to the ability of an individual or

machine to perform more than one task, or multiple tasks, at the same time.” Contrary to

this definition, even though we think we should be able to switch between multiple tasks as

simultaneously and effortlessly as a computer can, the truth is individuals are not machines.

As a result, multitasking does not always translate into increased productivity.

Initially, multitasking referred to busy executives juggling intense travel schedules, packed

calendars and heavy workloads, or to stay-at-home moms juggling kids, laundry and family

responsibilities. In today’s media-rich society, the definition has expanded beyond the

business world and into the daily fabric of family, peers, kids, babysitters and anyone else

attempting to balance between people, work, things, health and leisure in a compact time

frame.


According to the Merriam Webster dictionary the word “multitask” has been in use

since 1966. The phrase started gaining momentum in popularity and meaning beginning in

the late 1990s when the Internet collided with service, social and business cultures in the

U.S.

The rapid incline of the computer age changed the speed of information exchange

and new electronic distribution methods have resulted in inordinate demands on attention,

productivity and time, often at the expense of leisure.

As Microsoft’s executive Ray Ozzie explains, “Over the past few years there's been

an increasing blur between the boundaries of work and home. People used to go to work at

a specific time, come home at a certain time, and have white space in their lives during

commutes or other times. Now you can impose upon yourself a never-ending flood of

information. The question is, how will people utilize technology to gain control in a way that

lets them have a quality life and be effective at work?” (Fortune Magazine, 2005).

The onslaught of cellphone calls, e-mail, instant messages, blogs, and social networking

services are creating a modern day angst of stress that scientists are commonly refer to as

”cognitive overload.”

The result of this “cognitive overload” is like that of a juggler who can manage a few

items being inserted into rotation at a time, but as the items start to vary in speed, weight,

shape and size, eventually something has to drop, and everything else follows.

THE HUMAN BRAINS “INNER CEO”

In the research behind an article titled "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in

Task Switching" published in the American Psychological Society's Journal of Experimental

Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans, 2001, Vol

27. No.4), the report states, “Whether people toggle between browsing the Web and using


other computer programs, talk on cell phones while driving, pilot jumbo jets or monitor air

traffic, they're using their "executive control" processes -- the mental CEO -- found to be

associated with the brain's prefrontal cortex and other key neural regions such as the

parietal cortex. These interrelated cognitive processes establish priorities among tasks and

allocate the mind's resources to them.”

According to one of the researchers in this study, University of Michigan’s Dr. David

Meyer, "For each aspect of human performance -- perceiving, thinking and acting -- people

have specific mental resources whose effective use requires supervision through executive

mental control."

When conducting the study, Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans examined executive

control and the human capacity for multitasking and its limitations. Subjects were asked to

alternate between a variety of tasks such as solving math problems or classifying geometric

objects. The researchers measured the subjects’ swiftness of function in relation to the

familiarity or unfamiliarity of the successive tasks, and whether the rules for the tasks were

easy or more complex.

The results revealed that subjects lost time whenever they had to switch back and

forth between tasks, and as the tasks became more challenging, the time costs increased

significantly. There was also an increase in time costs when the subjects had to switch to

something that was relative unfamiliar. The better they knew the subject, the better they

performed a task and the quicker they were able to reorient themselves to the new

assignment.

Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans also found that the time that is taken when a person is

multitasking are the result of two, distinct and complementary stages of brain function,

creating a sort of “inner CEO” that helps a person manage prioritization. According to

Meyer, “Converging evidence suggests that the human ‘executive control’ processes have


two distinct, complementary stages. They call one stage ‘goal shifting’ (‘I want to do this

now instead of that’) and the other stage ‘rule activation’ (‘I’m turning off the rules for that

and turning on the rules for this’). Both of these stages help people to, without awareness,

switch between tasks. Problems arise only when switching costs conflict with environmental

demands for productivity and safety.” (2001, 763-797)

The report emphasizes it is important to understand executive control to help solve

elemental problems that Meyer says are “associated with the design of equipment and

human-computer interfaces for vehicle and aircraft operation, air traffic control, and many

other activities in which people must monitor and manipulate the environment through

technologically advanced devices."

The study was initially conducted at the University of Michigan in 1993 and 1994 and

findings were reported in 2001. One funding source for this research is the United States

Office of Naval Research. One of the reasons for this is because military personnel have to

be able to multitask in life and death situations while engaging in combat. For example,

when in the field, a soldier has to “decide on a general course of action, plan his path of

movement, run, and fire his weapon” (Pew & Mayor, 1995, 112). In naval information

command centers, aircraft operators have to process an enormous amount of incoming

information and constantly make a variety of important, instantaneous decisions. In cases

like these, mental overload can result in catastrophe.

Not only do the limitations of thought process have to be considered, but so does the

equipment supporting them. For example a pilot in a cockpit has to multitask very carefully

in preparation for takeoff, picking and choosing when he does what. The chance that he

will successfully complete his mission depends not only on his ability to prepare and fly the

plane, but also on his equipment. The same could apply for positions such as a heavy-

equipment operator, an astronaut or a structural metal worker. Tasks like these require the


ability to do several checks and balances simultaneously to avoid potentially disastrous

consequences. The ability to multitask effectively in these situations demonstrates the

benefits of successful multitasking, but not without pause. To help high-risk positions like

air traffic controllers, pilots and astronauts do a better job and do it is safely, it is most

important to gain a better understanding of their capabilities and limitations, and find

opportunities to improve the equipment, take advantage of their performance capabilities,

and protect them their own limitations.

Ultimately, further cultivation of the study of executive control will hopefully foster a

better comprehension of how the brain and human consciousness typically work, and as the

report states, aid in personnel selection (given individual differences in executive control),

training, assessment and diagnosis of brain-damaged patients (given advances in brain

imaging and mapping), rehabilitation, and formulation of government and industrial

regulations and standards.

FOXES AND HEDGEHOGS

What are you doing right now as you read this essay? Are you writing an e-mail

back to your Media Psychology group about what class to take in the Spring? Carrying on

an Instant Message conversation with your best friend and two co-workers simultaneously

while listening to your MP3 player? Eating your lunch in your office again at 3pm because

you never had time to leave your desk? Adding to your list of to do items to write tech

services about your malfunctioning browser? Making a list of the clients you're expect to

reach by close-of-business today? Writing an agenda in Word for the meeting on

Wednesday?

"People in a work setting," says Dr. David Meyer, "who are banging away on word

processors at the same time they have to answer phones and talk to their co-workers or


bosses -- they're doing switches all the time. Not being able to concentrate for, say, tens of

minutes at a time, may mean it's costing a company as much as 20 to 40 percent" in terms

of potential efficiency lost, or the ‘time cost’ of switching, as these researchers call it.

It is as if heavy-multitaskers get a mental writer’s block when switching tasks. First they

have to switch tasks, then actually make the switch and then get familiarized again on what

they were doing.

This divided attention can create a negative impact on the brain’s ability to retain

information, resulting in short-term memory problems and difficulty concentrating.

In a study published in 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol.

103, No. 31), Russell A. Poldrack, PhD, a neuroscience professor at the University of

California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues asked participants to learn by trial and error to

sort cards into different categories. Sometimes they could devote themselves solely to that

task. At other times, they had to multitask by listening simultaneously to high- and low-

pitched beeps and keep a mental tally of the high-pitched ones.

The participants were able to learn the sorting tasks while multitasking, except they

didn’t learn it in the same way as they did when focusing exclusively on one task.

According to the study, that’s because they relied more on procedural memory rather than

the more flexible declarative memory. After multitasking, the tests revealed the participants

could not apply what they learned in a contextual manner.

These behavioral findings were confirmed later by an fMRI study, which showed that

when the contributors were multitasking, they relied on the basal ganglia, one of the

systems that builds less flexible memories. When they were focused, the participants

depended on the hippocampus, which is the center of the declarative memory system.

There is a saying attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but

the hedgehog knows one big thing." Like the fox, the end result of multitasking is a mile-


wide-but-inch-deep route that allows the person to “know many things,” but struggles with

long-term memory retention. The hedgehog on the other hand, sticks to one task at a time

and ultimately is more productive--and even more accurate--because he is not relying on

short-term memory to complete the task.

FAMILY AND KIDS

It's 7:45 p.m., and my husband and I know exactly where our 18-year-old son is, or

at least where he is physically present. He retreated to his “cave-aka-dorm-at-home-aka-

bedroom” hours ago with his attention glued to his computer screen. He is bouncing

between an online multiplayer video game, “Lord of the Rings Online” (complete with

microphone, instant message chatting, and volume), texting friends on his cellphone,

downloading songs off a website and..somehow…chipping away at his college homework.

My husband, who has been home for nearly three hours, has worked around the

garden, made dinner, flipped channels on the television and held texting and phone

conversations on his cellphone and the landline. He is checking out airline flights and the

cost of gadgets on the Internet while talking with our 21-year-old daughter on his cell when I

arrive.

Walking in after my one-hour drive home from work, I am typically greeted about

50% of the time by my husband or son with a simple “hello" as they continue on with their

multitasking and keeping and an eye their various media interests.

This description mirrors the same one of the Cox family, one of 32 families in the Los

Angeles area participating in an intensive, four-year study of modern family life. The study,

which began in 2006, is being led by anthropologist Elinor Ochs, director of UCLA's Center

on Everyday Lives of Families. (Time, 2006)

Although multitasking was not the initial focus of the study when it began, Ochs was

struck by the remarkable change electronic media has had on families since she conducted


a similar study 20 years ago. She said she’s not sure how families can monitor all those

things at the same time, but she thinks “it is pretty consequential for the structure of the

family relationship."

It is hard to believe that in 1994, few computers were even linked to the Internet and

“interpersonal connectivity” and “multiprocessing” were foreign phrases in society. In 1990

the majority of adolescents responding to a survey done by Donald Roberts, a professor of

communication at Stanford, said the one medium they couldn't live without was a radio/CD

player (Time, 2006). In a 2004 follow-up, the computer surpassed the old-fashioned CD

player without difficulty.

Today 87% of kids are online by the seventh grade, according to the Pew Internet

and American Life Project (Lenhart, Madden, & Rainie, 2006). Why shouldn’t they? They

can get every form of entertainment and information from one location—movies, tv, e-mail,

chat rooms, games, e-mail, social network sites. According to a survey by the Kaiser

Family Foundation in 2005, American kids ages 8-18 were still maintaining 6.5 hours a day

of electronic consumption, but with the advent of “media multitasking,” they are actually

cramming 8.5 hours worth of exposure in the same amount of time (Time, 2006).

Gone are the days of sitting down for dinner with the family and retiring to watch

television together with family or friends. In today’s world, families are simultaneously

absorbing multiple forms of electronics while watching TV, reading or listening to music,

instant messaging, social networking or surfing the Internet. Kids like those in the Cox

family can repair family computers and DVD players and even make a PowerPoint

presentation about their Christmas wish list. Not all of the efforts are frivolous, however.

Their 14-year-old daughter is creating a documentary of her father’s treatment for cancer.

Parents have watched this phenomenon unfold with a mixture of astonishment and

trepidation, especially how much this screen time affects their academic studies and family


life. "We rarely have dinner together anymore," frets Stephen. "Everyone is in their own

little world, and we don't get out together to have a social life."

GENERATION “M”

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2006):

87% of those ages 12-17 use the Internet. Fully 87% of those aged 12 to 17, use the Internet. That amounts to about 21 million youth who use the Internet, up from roughly 17 million when we surveyed this age cohort in late 2000. Not only has the wired share of the teenage population grown, but teens’ use of the Internet has intensified. Teenagers now use the Internet more often and in a greater variety of ways than they did in 2000. There are now approximately 11 million teens who go online daily, compared to about 7 million in 2000.”

The Kaiser Foundation dubbed these media-hungry teenagers as “Generation M” or

Generation Media (Kaiser Foundation, 2005). Just as in the past, these teenagers love to

embrace anything that will give them new freedoms and/or shock adults (think of what the

automobile did for dating), and adults in every generational change find new technologies a

threat to social order.

For Generation M, multitasking is a significant part of the way they read, write,

interact and learn.

Part of the problem, though, is that the parents are just as guilty. Just like when the

bell rings at most public high schools, parents are just as guilty as kids are of compulsively

reaching for their bag to check their cellphone or Blackberrys whenever they have a

chance. Like “monkey see as monkey do” – and as difficult as it may seem – it is up to

parents to mentor their children by example. Have a mandatory sit down dinner at least

once a week. Enforce a one-hour (minimum) “quiet time” at least twice a week where no

electronics are allowed. Perhaps instead of calling the son in his bedroom from your

cellphone in the living room, why not walk down the hall and knock on the door and to

speak face to face? What a concept!


Many educators, researchers and psychologist say the parents need to actively

ensure their teenagers break free of obsessive involvement with electronic media and

physically socialize with their family over meals or even (clutch the Blackberry!) just talk

face to face. This is not an easy task in today’s world since both parents and kids are

equally tethered to their gadgets, and both are leading highly scheduled lives that have

virtually driven them to multitask in the first place.

As Time magazine writer Claudia Wallis (March, 2006) in her article, “The

Multitasking Generation,” says, “Generation M has a lot to teach parents and teachers

about what new technology can do. But it's up to grownups to show them what it can't do,

and that there's life beyond the screen.”

GENDER

It appears that research on gender differences in multitasking is fairly new. In most

cases, women--including my 88-year-old mother-in-law and my colleague, a 39-year-old

executive/wife/mother of two--passionately declare that women are better at multitasking

than men, hands down. After all, since the days of hunters and gathers, mothers have

breastfed their infants while picking berries, cooking a meal and keeping an eye on the

other children.

Still, men today are just as challenged as women with the influence in this age of

Web-enabled computers, when it has become routine to compulsively check e-mail,

maintain three social sites (Facebook, Twitter and IM), watch basketball on TV and Google

the latest season’s statistics all at once.

In the 2006 study, “Gender Differences in Multitasking” by Brandy R. Criss at

Missouri Western State University, she proposes that women are more efficient at

multitasking, particularly in the area of accuracy versus productivity, a subject still under

debate.


According to this report, Dr. Christina Williams, the chair of the Psychology

Department at Duke University, has done studies with rats, ”where the male rats have

exhibited more ‘tunnel vision’ than female rats (Williams & Meck, 1990). Williams study

discovered that female rats use multiple cues, including examining landmarks of the maze

and geometry to navigate a maze, while male rats just used geometry. This implies that

women use their minds to synthesize multiple cues from the environment, while men would

rather use single cues.”

Researchers like Dr. David Meyers do not believe there is any significant difference

between the genders with multitasking. Dr. Marcel Just, Director of the Center for Cognitive

Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University agrees with Meyer. He conducted studies on

brain mapping, with participants between 18- to 32-years-old. His research demonstrated

that “only females scored higher when asked to listen to two things at the same time. In

every other cognitive tasks pairing, there are no statistical differences. His conclusion is that

men and women are equally productive with multitasking (Just, 2001). Although more

conclusive studies need to be conducted, the outcome will surely continue to present some

heated debates among genders.

THE DOG CHASING ITS E-MAILTAIL – THE WORKPLACE

Today’s society no longer has a short attention span, they have a shared attention

span, and we are working faster and longer, stuffing our limited “down time” with busy

activities. In some ways, new technologies have made our lives easier, but they also are

leaving us with an underlying feeling of unease as we constantly field interruptions,

deadlines and relentlessly unfinished tasks in the workplace and in the home.

As neuroscientist Jordan Grafman told Time magazine in 2006, “When we switch

from one task to another and back again, our brain is pushing pause and play buttons,


something that appears to make us unique, The frontal cortex acts as the main boss,

assessing tasks, ranking importance and ordering what comes when. Yet, what to do next

isn't always its decision. Your boss wants something now, a co-worker barges into your

cubicle, your kid's soccer game just got moved.” The feeling of personal loss and time

impoverishment leaves us thirsty and longing for more, but more what? Rest, better health,

quality of life, but certainly not MORE E-MAIL.

In today’s world, we are taking less earned vacations. With competition at an all-

time national and global high, the company’s bottom line – and competition for our job – is

fierce. Just to be safe, we don’t stray too far away, always remain accountable, always

check in, allowing us to to get used to being on alert 24/7. It seems that more successful

someone is, the more he or she complains about time deprivation. As the expectations and

opportunities rise, time -- which is finite -- doesn’t ever seem to keep up (Seattle Times

Magazine, 2004).

Meanwhile, e-mail, a once and often lauded “timesaver,” has become a “time sucker”

instead, taking its toll on productivity in the workplace. According to a story in the Los

Angeles Times (2008):

Tony Wright, a software developer in Seattle who recently launched (in beta form) RescueTime, a program that tracks how users spend their time on the computer, has found that 38% of office workers' time is spent on communication applications such as e-mail. And according to a report to be published in October [2008] by the New York-based research firm Basex, interruptions such as spam, other unnecessary e-mail and instant-messages take up 28% of the average knowledge worker's day. On top of that is what Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira refers to as recovery time -- the time to get back to where you were before you were interrupted, which Spira says is 10 to 20 times the duration of the interruption. These interruptions account for up to 2.1 hours per worker per day. Multiply that by 56 million knowledge workers in the U.S., he calculates, and the cost is $650 billion per year.

As Linda Stone, a software executive who has worked both Apple and Microsoft,

observes, our jobs today are “interrupt driven” and it seems that “distractions are not just a


plague on our work—sometimes they are our work. To be cut off from our work is to be

cut off from everything.” She also points out the emotional reward of responding to the

demands of modern office chaos, “The constant pinging makes us feel needed and desired.

The reason many interruptions seem impossible to ignore is that they are about

relationships - someone, or something, is calling out to us. It is why we have such complex

emotions about the chaos of the modern office, feeling alternately drained by its demands

and exhilarated when we successfully surf the flood.” In other words, it makes us feel

important, but when it reaches a compulsive addiction status, we end up getting over-

connected. As Stone says, ”Somewhere there is a path down the center--if only there was

some way to find it.”

There are several organizational management seminars and programs designed to

help teach people how to manage e-mail and the frustrations caused by cognitive overload.

In fact, in many ways it has become a cottage industry of its own. This topic could be a

completely separate 3,500 word essay, so for the purpose of space and time, I will post a

few articles separately on the Fielding Felix site for those interested in tips in ways to

manage e-mail.

CONCLUSION

“Information is no longer a scare resource, attention is.” – Clive Thompson, New

York Times (2005)

Major corporations, along with government entities such as NASA and the military,

are becoming increasingly aware of the perils of cognitive overload and its impact on human

behavior, productivity and safety. The very companies that created the gizmos and gadgets

and add-ons (i.e. Microsoft and Apple) resulting in this digital gluttony have discovered there

is money to be made in simplifying things. Ironically, even though these companies are the

ones who created the digital systems behind the modern chaos, they are the ones


recognizing there is a competitive advantage in figuring out how to address this problem.

From families who need to spend more face time together to women and men in the

workplace who need to be constantly mindful of the importance of thoughtful focus, space

and time, there is one thing for certain. In the modern world, we are not just fighter pilots

firing digital missives at an alarming pace. We are physical intuitive human beings that

have an innate need to find balance in our lives. In closing, David Levy, a professor in the

University of Washington's School of Information, was on to something when he was quoted

in the Seattle Times Magazine (2004) article, “Life interrupted: Plugged Into All, We`re

Stressed to Distraction”:

"Perhaps we're at a similar beginning with our information requirements. We're just beginning to notice that something is out of balance. Perhaps we could be at the beginning of research, social activism, consciousness-raising and education that would help us not just identify the problem but find solutions."

Sounds good, of course, but first we have to find the time to focus on it.


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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174696-9,00.html

Documents

Media Psychology: Impact of Multitasking on Human Behavior