Multitasks

​
A​
Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishing your
homework? People who have these kinds of habits are called multi-taskers. Multitasks
are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing their focus. However,
Thomas Lehman, a researcher in Psychology, believes people never really do multiple
things simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading while listening to music, but in
reality, the brain can only focus on one task. Reading the words in a book will cause
you to ignore some of the words of the music. When people think they are
accomplishing two different tasks efficiently, what they are really doing is dividing
their focus. While listening to music, people become less able to focus on their
surroundings. For example, we all have experience of times when we talk with friends
and they are not responding properly. Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, or
maybe they are reading a text on their smartphone and don't hear what you are saying.
Lehman called this phenomenon “email voice”.

B​
The world has been changed by computers and its spin offs like smart-phones or
cellphones. Now that most individuals have a personal device, like a smart-phone or a
laptop, they are frequently reading, watching or listening to virtual information. This
raises the occurrence of multitasking in our day to day life. Now when you work, you
work with your typewriter, your cellphone, and some colleagues who may drop by at any
time to speak with you. In professional meetings, when one normally focuses and
listens to one another, people are more likely to have a cell phone in their lap, reading
or communicating silently with more people than ever, even inventions such as the
cordless phone have increased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone
would ring, and then the housewife would have to stop her activities to answer it. When
it rang, the housewife will sit down with her legs up, and chat, with no laundry or
sweeping or answering the door. In the modern era, our technology is convenient
enough to not interrupt our daily tasks.
C​
Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the
prefrontal cortex, which controls the brain while a person is multitasking. According to
his studies, the size of this cortex varies between species. He found that for humans,
the size of this part constitutes one third of the brain, while it is only 4 to 5 percent in
dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Given that this cortex is larger on a human, it allows
a human to be more flexible and accurate in his or her multitasking. However, Miller
wanted to look further into whether the cortex was truly processing information about
two different tasks simultaneously. He designed an experiment where he presents visual
stimulants to his subjects in a wax that mimics multi-tasking. Miller then attached
sensors to the patients' heads to pick up the electric patterns of the brain. This sensor
would show if the brain particles, called neurons, were truly processing two different
tasks. What he found is that the brain neurons only lit up in singular areas one at a
time, and never simultaneously.

D​
Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan, studied the young adults in a similar
experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math problems and classify
simple words into different categories. For this experiment, Meyer found that when you
think you are doing several jobs at the same time, you are actually switching between
jobs. Even though the people tried to do the tasks at the same time, and both tasks
were eventually accomplished, overall, the task took more time than if the person
focused on a single task one at a time.

E​
People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking, Gloria Mark set office workers as his
subjects. He found that they were constantly multitasking. He observed that nearly every
11 minutes people at work were disrupted. He found that doing different jobs at the
same time may actually save time. However, despite the fact that they are faster, it
does not mean they are more efficient. And we are equally likely to self-interrupt as be
interrupted by outside sources. He found that in office nearly every 12 minutes an
employee would stop and with no reason at all, check a website on their computer, call
someone or write an email. If they concentrated for more than 20 minutes, they would
feel distressed. He suggested that the average person may suffer from a short
concentration span. This short attention span might be natural, but others suggest that
new technology may be the problem. With cellphones and computers at our sides at all
times, people will never run out of distractions. The format of media, such as
advertisements, music, news articles and TV shows are also shortening, so people are
used to paying attention to information for a very short time.

F​
So even though focusing on one single task is the most efficient way for our brains to
work, it is not practical to use this method in real life. According to human nature,
people feel more comfortable and efficient in environments with a variety of tasks,
Edward Hallowell said that people are losing a lot of efficiency in the workplace due to
multitasking, outside distractions and self-distractions. As it matters of fact, the
changes made to the workplace do not have to be dramatic. No one is suggesting we
ban e-mail or make employees focus on only one task. However, certain common
workplace tasks, such as group meetings, would be more efficient if we banned
cell-phones, a common distraction. A person can also apply these tips to prevent
self-distraction. Instead of arriving to your office and checking all of your e-mails for
new tasks, a common workplace ritual, a person could dedicate an hour to a single task
first thing in the morning. Self-timing is a great way to reduce distraction and
efficiently finish tasks one by one, instead of slowing ourselves down with
multi-tasking.
Questions 1-5

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet

1 a reference to a domestic situation that does not require multitasking

2 a possible explanation of why we always do multitask together

3 a practical solution to multitask in work environment

4 relating multitasking to the size of prefrontal cortex

5 longer time spent doing two tasks at the same time than one at a time

Questions 6-10

Look at the following statements (Questions 6-10) and the list of scientists below.
Match each statement with the correct scientist, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet. NB

You may use any letter more than once.

A Thomas Lehman D Gloria Mark

B Earl Miller E Edward Hallowell

6 When faced with multiple visual stimulants, one can only concentrate on one of
them.​
7 Doing two things together may be faster but not better.​
8 People never really do two things together even if you think you do.​
9 The causes of multitasking lie in the environment.​
10 Even minor changes in the workplace will improve work efficiency.

Questions 11-13

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your
answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

A term used to refer to a situation when you are reading a text and cannot focus on
your surroundings is 11............... .

The 12............... part of the brain controls multitasking.

The practical solution of multitasking at work is not to allow the use of cellphones
in 13............... .