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
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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.
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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 FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 3 of 3
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 FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 4 of 4
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 heavyequipment operator, an astronaut or a structural metal worker. Tasks like these require the FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 5 of 5
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
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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 lowpitched 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 mileFIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 7 of 7
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-akabedroom” 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 FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 8 of 8
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 FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 9 of 9
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!
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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. FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 11 of 11
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, FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 12 of 12
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 alltime 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 email 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
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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 overconnected. 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 FIELDING - DIGITAL STORYTELLING - MULTITASKING WEEK TEN FINAL ds[1].doc - Page 14 of 14
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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Pew, R., & Mavor, A.(Eds.). (1995). Modeling human and organizational behavior: Application to military simulations. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Richtel, M. (2008, June 18, 2008). Lost in E-mail,Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast. The New York Times, Retrieved 3/29/09http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/technology/14email.html?ex=1214625600&en=c06a5c594eb1dcfe&ei=5070&emc=eta1 Robbins, S. (2004). Tips for mastering E-mail overload. Working Knowledge for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School. Retrieved 4/1/09 from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4438.html Roberts, Donald F., Foehr, Ulla G., Rideout, Victoria (2005). Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds. Kaiser Family Foundation, March, 2005. Retrieved 4/1/09 from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7251.cfm Rubinstein, J.S., Meyer D.E., & Evans, J.E. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763-797. Seven, R. (2004, November 28). Life interrupted: Plugged into all, we`re stressed to distraction. Pacific Northwest: The Seattle Times Magazine, Retrieved 4/1/09, from http://seattletimes. nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/1128/cover.html. Small Business Encyclopedia: Multitasking (2009). Answers.com. Retrieved 4/1/09 from http://www.answers.com/topic/multitasking Thompson, Clive (2004, October 2005). Meet the Life Hackers. New York Times. Retrieved 4/1/09 from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?ei=5090&en=c8985a80d74cefc1&e x=1287115200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=11295218 53-ar/Jp1qnf0XCl9MGUEiLGA Wallis, Claudia (March 19, 2006). The MultiTasking Generation. Time Magazine. Retrieved 3/29/09 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174696-9,00.html Williams, C.L. & W.H. Meck. (1990). Organizational effects or early gonadal secretions on sexual differentiation in spatial memory. Behavioral Neuroscience, 104(1), 84- 97.
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