News: Multitasking?
Friday, June 11, 2010
Multitasking? Prepare to pay a high price
Nerds Experience More Stress & Have Trouble Focusing And Shutting Out Irrelevant Information: Experts.
San Francisco: When one of the most important email messages of his life landed in his inbox a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his internet start-up.
The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood. While the managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal, Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plants, and he has trouble focusing on family.
Scientists say juggling email, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. Our ability to focus is being undermined by busts of information, they say.
These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement - a dopamine squirt - that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.
The resulting distraction can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for million of people like Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.
While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.
And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers. In 2008, people consumed three times as much information each day as they did in 1960. And they are constantly shifting their attention. Computer users at work change windows or check email or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, new research shows.
In a test created by Eyal Ophir, a student-turned-researcher at Stanford, subjects at a computer were shown an image of red rectangles. Then they saw a similar image and were asked whether any of the rectangles had moved. Blue rectangles were added, and the subjects were told to ignore them. The multitaskers then did a significantly worse jobh than others at recognizing whether red rectangles had changed psition.
So, too, the multitaskers took longer than non-multitaskers to switch among taskes, like differentiating vowels from consonants and then odd from even numbers. The multitaskers were shown to be less efficient at juggling problems. Other tests at Stanford to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.
Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford things the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminihes empathy by limiting how another, even in the same room. "The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other. "he said. "It shows how much you care." He adds: "A significant fraction of people's experiences are now fragmented."
The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood. While the managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal, Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plants, and he has trouble focusing on family.
Scientists say juggling email, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. Our ability to focus is being undermined by busts of information, they say.
These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement - a dopamine squirt - that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.
The resulting distraction can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for million of people like Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.
While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.
And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers. In 2008, people consumed three times as much information each day as they did in 1960. And they are constantly shifting their attention. Computer users at work change windows or check email or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, new research shows.
In a test created by Eyal Ophir, a student-turned-researcher at Stanford, subjects at a computer were shown an image of red rectangles. Then they saw a similar image and were asked whether any of the rectangles had moved. Blue rectangles were added, and the subjects were told to ignore them. The multitaskers then did a significantly worse jobh than others at recognizing whether red rectangles had changed psition.
So, too, the multitaskers took longer than non-multitaskers to switch among taskes, like differentiating vowels from consonants and then odd from even numbers. The multitaskers were shown to be less efficient at juggling problems. Other tests at Stanford to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.
Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford things the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminihes empathy by limiting how another, even in the same room. "The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other. "he said. "It shows how much you care." He adds: "A significant fraction of people's experiences are now fragmented."
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