The Limits of Multitasking

Author(s): KLAUS MANHART

Source: Scientific American Mind , Vol. 14, No. 5 (2004), pp. 62-67
Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24997557

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Scientific American Mind

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The
Limits of
Multitasking
Reading e-mail, sorting data and talking on the
phone at once—multitasking clearly saves time
in a fast-paced world. Or does it?
BY KLAUS MANHART

Y ou arrive at the office, review your 17-point

to-do list and immediately start to feel butterflies
in your stomach. You resolve to tackle the items
as fast as possible. While you return calls, you sort
e-mail and snail mail. You begin keying in slides
for tomorrow’s presentation. Then the boss
comes in to demand an update on sales figures—
ASAP, please. You’ve just opened the spreadsheet
til, 15 minutes later, you are finally able to get rid
of the client politely.
Anybody who expects to get ahead today bet-
ter master the art of multitasking, right? A recent
study of employees by the Families and Work In-
stitute in New York City finds that some 45 per-
cent of U.S. workers believe they are asked or ex-
pected to work on too many tasks at once.
when one of your most important customers calls. Their bosses might be surprised to learn that
With the receiver jammed between your shoulder they are actually wasting their workers’ time. As
and ear, you keep tabbing up the sales totals un- it turns out, the human brain cannot truly ape the

62 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND

COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 computer’s knack of crunching data in the back- for drivers, air traffic controllers and others who Multitasking as
ground while toggling among processing win- handle machinery. Recognizing the problem, extreme sport:
dows. Instead a growing number of studies show New Jersey became the second state (after New in many fields
ZEFA VISUAL MEDIA–GERMANY

that trying to juggle jobs rather than completing York) this past July to ban drivers from using a juggling several
them sequentially can take longer overall and cell phone without a headset. tasks has long
since become
leave multitaskers with a reduced ability to per- How can a time-management strategy that
part of the job.
form each task. In addition, the stress associated has become part of the common wisdom actual-
with multitasking may contribute to short-term ly be so off base? To explore that question re-
memory difficulties. The combination results in quires a closer look at an area of consciousness
inefficiency, sloppy thinking and mistakes— not to research that examines how the brain focuses
mention the possible dangers of divided attention attention.

www.sciam.com 63
COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ( Interference in Your Brain )
alking and chewing gum may work out. But you words themselves but rather call out the colors of the

W can strain your brain— or, more precisely, your at-

tention resources— when you try to combine a
routine, automated task (such as reading) with one that
type you see.
Many people take longer to complete the second test
and may trip over one or more of the colors. The Stroop ef-
demands conscious control. Called interference or the fect thus demonstrates how two psychological processes,
Stroop effect, the phenomenon was first reported by Amer- running in parallel, collide with each other. Naming the col-
ican psychologist John Ridley Stroop in the December ors is the primary task, which demands concentration and
1935 Journal of Experimental Psychology. must be consciously controlled. The second process, read-
To experience interference for yourself, say the colors ing, has been so well learned that it runs automatically and
of the Xs in the tables below out loud and as quickly as can be suppressed only with effort. Solving the primary task
possible. Then name the colors of the words listed in is thus slowed and we notice a hesitation when we try to
the columns at the right. Remember, do not read the say that, for instance, the color of the word “red” is green.

XXXX XXXX blue yellow

XXXX XXXX red yellow
XXXX XXXX blue red
XXXX XXXX yellow blue
XXXX XXXX gray red
XXXX XXXX red green
XXXX XXXX blue blue
XXXX XXXX green yellow
XXXX XXXX yellow green
XXXX XXXX green red

Automatic Interference sciously— and sometimes we have trouble sup-

One of the modern foundations of current pressing them when we want to. As soon as we see
knowledge about multitasking in the brain was a word, we decipher it unconsciously. If the word’s
laid in 1935. That was when American psycholo- meaning contradicts other information provided
gist John Ridley Stroop reported that processing simultaneously, interference results. [To take the
the information for one task can cause “interfer- test yourself, see box above.]
ence” with another. Stroop noticed that when During the past couple of decades, psycholo-
study participants were asked to name the color of gists have probed more deeply into the nature and
a word, such as “green,” printed in an incompat- limitations of multitasking in the brain. Part of the
ible color— say, red— they experienced difficulty ability to juggle depends on the types of the tasks.
saying the color. Now known as the Stroop effect, In the absence of the contradictory cues that cause
the phenomenon is thought to occur when two interference, automated tasks (walking, for in-
tasks get tangled: the brain must suppress one that stance) are fairly easy to blend with harder ones
has been learned so well that it has become auto- (such as carrying on a conversation). It is also pos-
matic (reading) to attend to a second that requires sible to combine two relatively complicated tasks,
concentration (naming the color). The brain per- as long as they are not too similar. Pianists, for ex-
forms automated processes quickly and uncon- ample, can play a new piece fairly quickly, sight-

64 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND

COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ( Up to a point, people can improve their
multitasking skills with practice—at least
those that can become routine. )
reading it, while at the same
time repeating back a text
that is being read to them at
the rate of 150 words per
minute. The pianists receive
the information via different
input channels (eyes and
ears), use the music- and
speech-processing regions of
their brains, respectively, and
in the end carry out these
tasks in one case by speaking
and in the other by using
their hand and arm muscles.
Up to a point, people can
improve their multitasking
skills with practice— at least those that can become ing in from the sensory systems as a block; subse-
routine. In one study, scientists gave a group of quent events are then processed in the next win-
students texts to read, while at the same time dic- dow. What appears to be multitasking is thus more
tating words for them to write down. In the be- akin to channel surfing among different television
ginning, the participants found it extremely chal- stations. A person can concentrate on a conversa-
lenging to do both tasks, and they were forced to tion for three seconds, then for three seconds on a
read much more slowly than usual. But after six crying child and three on a computer screen. While
weeks of practice, they could read at their normal one subject at a time occupies the foreground of
speed. The researchers, psychologists Elizabeth S. consciousness, the others stay in the background
Spelke, now at Harvard University, William Hirst, until they, in turn, are given access to the central
now at the New School University in New York processor. [For more on how scientists explain the
and Ulric Neisser of Cornell University, were sur- limits of attention, see box on page 67.]
prised to discover that the subjects no longer were This effect seems to be confirmed by the results
aware of what they were jotting down. Their from research teams at the Center for Cognitive
brains had automated the writing. Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University. The
scientists used an MRI (magnetic resonance imag-
Switching Channels ing) machine to measure brain activity as subjects
By-rote tasks require fewer mental resources, listened to sentences being read to them while at
but they cannot be fobbed off entirely. And the same time mentally rotating two three-dimen-
switching tasks comes at a mental cost: reduced sional figures. First, the investigators established
ability to focus on the matter at hand, lost time with tomographic images that there was minimal
during “resetting” for different jobs and even “task similarity.” The activated regions of the
RUBBERBALL PRODUCTIONS/GETTY IMAGES

memory problems. brain barely overlapped, so the two tasks pre-

Psychologist and brain researcher Ernst Pöp- sumably ought to have been easy to combine.
pel of the Institute for Medical Psychology at the When the subjects tried to perform both simulta-
Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich believes neously, however, they struggled. They could
that it is impossible to carry out two or three dif- manage to do both but not as quickly and not as
ferent tasks simultaneously with the same degree well as doing either by itself.
of concentration. He says that seemingly simulta-
neous awareness and processing of information (The Author)
actually takes place in “three-second windows.”
KLAUS MANHART has a degree in the philosophy of science
In these three-second increments, the brain and works as a social scientist as well as freelance writer
takes in all the data about the environment stream- in Munich, Germany.

www.sciam.com 65
COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Language Language in
Task Alone Dual Task

R L Speech-processing brain region

Brain regions responsible for
spatial tasks
90 Sum
of two
80 tasks

Total brain activity (voxels)

70

60

50 Single Single Double-

speech spatial tasking
40 task task

30

20

10

If two thought problems must be solved simul-

taneously rather than sequentially, the brain
must drastically cut the resources allocated to
each (above). Images of two people’s brains
show neural activity decreases when neurons
juggle two tasks at once as compared with
focusing on one task alone (left).
Rotation Rotation in
Task Alone Dual Task
What was striking was how brain activity
dropped while the subjects tried to perform the
R L two tasks: it was less than two thirds as much as
the total devoted to each task when processed in-
dependently [see illustrations on this page]. “The
human brain cannot simply double its efforts
when there are two problems to solve at the same
time,” concludes Marcel Just, leader of the study.
Another experiment, by psychologist David E.
Meyer of the University of Michigan at Ann Ar-
bor and his colleagues, quantified just how much
time we can lose when we shuttle among tasks.
The researchers asked test participants to write a
report and check their e-mail at the same time.
MARCEL JUST Carnegie Mellon University

Those individuals who constantly jumped back

and forth between the tasks took about one and
a half times as long to finish as those who com-
pleted one job before turning to another.
In another trial, the scientists asked subjects to
switch between solving math problems and classi-
fying geometric figures. They found that the more
difficult the problems and the more complex the
rules used in sorting, the more time the subjects
lost in switching. Each switchover from one task
to the next meant rethinking and thus involved ad-

66 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND

COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
( Multiple Multitasking Models)
Cognitive psychologists have developed three Theories of Central Capacity. These posit that
models to account for apparent multitasking the brain has limited, or finite, attention resources
in humans. that can be flexibly allocated among different
tasks. The quality of performance in doing two
One Channel, or Bottleneck, Theories. These tasks depends on the level of cognitive resources
hold that the brain has a single data-processing that the two require; if the sum exceeds attention
channel, analogous to serial processing in a resources, performance declines.
computer; true parallel processing of several Modular Theories. Based on the idea that brains
tasks is fundamentally impossible. Combining work like a computer— one with rich networks
tasks is only possible if we rapidly jump back created from specialized subsystems. The de-
and forth among them. What looks like multi- cisive factor for multitasking for this model is
tasking is explained by “redundancy.” For ex- similarity of tasks. When performance declines,
ample, one does not have to focus on every word we can conclude that two tasks are using the
to read and understand a text. The brain can de- same resources or subsystems. Cognitive neu-
vote attention during those spare moments to ropsychologists currently favor modular theories
another task. over the alternatives.

( By its nature, multitasking is stressful, and the

area in the brain most involved with multitasking
is also most affected by the resulting stress. )
ditional neuronal resources. In effect, the brain damage makes it difficult for a person to acquire
needs time to shut off the rules for one task and new skills and facts.
to turn on the rules for another. “Multitasking Pöppel does not recommend mental channel
saves time only when it is a matter of relaxed, rou- surfing. During such disjointed thinking, connec-
tine tasks,” Meyer says. tions are lost, and as a result no lasting neuronal
It also takes the brain longer to change gears representation is created from the information so
when switching back to an interrupted task rapid- processed. “In this way, the brain is very conser-
ly, as many multitaskers do, rather than waiting vative and protects itself,” the scientist warns.
longer before switching back. A fall 2002 study Psychiatrists Edward Hallowell and John Ratey
from the National Institute of Mental Health of Harvard say that multitasking can cause “pseu-
found that the brain has to overcome “inhibi- do-ADD,” which is different from ADD, attention-
tions” it imposed on itself to stop doing the origi- deficit disorder [see “Informing the ADHD De-
nal task in the first place. bate,” by Aribert Rothenberger and Tobias Ba-
naschewski, on page 50]. Those affected by
Stressing Memory pseudo-ADD constantly seek new information and
By its nature, multitasking is stressful, and the have difficulties in concentrating on its content.
area in the brain most involved with multitasking So let the e-mail sit while you work on that pre-
is also most affected by the resulting stress. Lo- sentation. After all, a certain satisfaction comes
cated right behind the forehead, the prefrontal from a job well done.
cortex, which neuroscientists call the “executive”
part of the brain, helps us assess tasks, prioritize (Further Reading)
them and assign mental resources. It also “marks”
◆ Attention. Edited by Odmar Neumann and Andries F. Sanders. Series 3:
the spot at which a task has been interrupted, so
Handbook of Perception and Action. Harcourt, 1996.
we can return to it later. This area is affected by ◆ Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. Fifth edition. John R. Anderson.
prolonged stress. Such stress can also affect brain W. H. Freeman and Company, 1999.
cells in another region, the hippocampus, which ◆ Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Joshua S.
is important for forming new memories and ac- Rubinstein, David E. Meyer and Jeffrey E. Evans in Journal of Experimental
Psychology—Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 27, No. 4, pages
cessing existing ones [see “Stressed-Out Memo-
763–797; August 2001. Available at www.apa.org/journals/xhp/
ries,” by Robert M. Sapolsky, on page 28]. That press_releases/august_2001/xhp274763.html

www.sciam.com 67
COPYRIGHT 2004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

This content downloaded from

45.5.167.198 on Mon, 27 May 2024 04:38:33 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms