http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/10/29/memory-problems-perhaps-you-are-multi-tasking/

Memory Problems? Perhaps you are Multi-tasking

Today's kids are into multi-tasking. This is the generation hooked on iPods, IM'ing, video games - not to mention TV! Many people in my generation think it is wonderful that kids can do all these things simultaneously and are impressed with their competence.

Well, as a teacher of such kids when they reach college, I am not impressed. College students these days have short attention spans and have trouble concentrating. They got this way in secondary school. I see this in the middle-school outreach program I help run. At this age kids are really wrapped up in multi-tasking―at the expense of focus.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study last year, school kids in all grades beyond the second grade committed, on average, more than six hours per day to TV or videos, music, video games, and computers. Almost one-third reported that "most of the time" they did their homework while chatting on the phone, surfing the Web, sending instant messages, watching TV, or listening to music.

Kids think that this entertainment while studying helps their learning. It probably does make learning less tedious, but it clearly makes learning less efficient and less effective. Multi-tasking violates everything we know about how memory works. Now we have objective scientific evidence that multi-tasking impairs learning. A recent National Academy of Sciences study with college-age students (Reference #1 below) did an experiment where the subjects were to learn a task under two conditions, one with no distractions and the other while listening to high- and low-tone beeps, attending to the high ones. The total amount of learning was the superficially the same in both conditions, but with distractions, the learning was stereotyped and learners had difficulty in applying what they learned to other contexts and situations. The study also used functional MRI (fMRI) to assess brain activity under test conditions. The imaging data indicated that the memory task and the distraction stimuli engage different parts of the brain and that these regions probably compete with each other.

The study did not address the issue of passive distraction, such as listening to music while studying. I think that music can also be a major distraction, except for certain kinds of music played under muted conditions (see my book Thank You, Brain, For All You Remember. What You Forgot Was My Fault, pages 47, 165, and 197, Reference #2 below) .

One reason that multi-tasking interferes with memory is that the brain really does not multi-task. It just fools you into thinking so, and the way the brain does handle multiple tasks makes it hard to remember anything.

Brains Can’t Really Multi-task

Our brain works hard to fool us into thinking it can do more than one thing at a time. It can't. Recent MRI studies at Vanderbilt (#3) prove that the brain is not built for good multi-tasking. When trying to do two things at once, the brain temporarily shuts down one task while trying to do the other. In the study, even doing something as simple as pressing a button when an image is flashed caused a delay in brain operation. MRI images showed that a central bottleneck occurred when subjects were trying to do two things at once, such as pressing the appropriate computer key in response to hearing one of eight possible sounds and uttering an appropriate verbal response when seeing images. Activity in the brain that was associated with each task

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was prioritized, showing up first in one brain area and then in the other ― not in both areas simultaneously. In other words, the brain only worked on one task at a time, postponing the second task and deceiving the subjects into thinking they were working on both tasks simultaneously. The delay between switching functions was as long as a second. It is highly likely, though not yet studied, that the delays and confusion magnify with increases in the number of different things one tries to do simultaneously.

So what has this got to do with memory?

Well, if you try to memorize the first task and the brain immediately switches to the second task, performance of the second task interferes with consolidation of the memory of the first task.

In my earlier article on memory consolidation, I explained how early memory is vulnerable to interference and must be protected from distractions and new information in order for the memory to be made permanent. Likewise, there are proactive effects wherein what you learn on the first task can interfere with learning on the second. All these problems are compounded if there are three or more tasks in a “multi-tasking” experience.

Multi-tasking and School Performance

A study of 517 California high-school students found that grades were lower in those who socially interacted via MySpace, instant messaging (IM) accounts, or who used cell phones. In the study (4), students answered a questionnaire on what social networking devices they used and when they used them. The answers were paired with the grades (from the previous year and the most recent report card).

In this study, 72% of the students had a My Space account, 76% had a cell phone, and 68% had an IM address. Those who had a MySpace account had significantly lower grades than those without an account. The same was true for those that used IM, compared with those who did not. Cell phone use was also associated with lower grades and the effect was magnified if text messaging was used on cell phones. Not surprisingly,

if these devices were used during homework, the grades were even lower than for students who used these technologies outside of homework. Almost half reported text messaging during class time, and their grades were lower than the students who only used IM outside of class.

These are correlational data and do not prove that using these devices causes lower grades. But it is a good bet. Multi-tasking, as when using the communication devices while trying to do homework or learn in class, can be expected to interfere with memory. Poor memory yields lower grades.

Bill Klemm--- W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. Scientist, professor, author, speaker As a professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, Bill has taught about the brain and behavior at all levels, from freshmen, to seniors, to graduate students to post-docs. His recent books include Thank You, Brain, For All You Remember. What You Forgot Was My Fault and Core Ideas in Neuroscience.

References

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- #1 Foerde, K., Knowlton, Barbara J., and Poldrack, Russell A. 2006. Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 103: 11778–11783.– #2 Klemm, W. R. 2004. Thank You Brain for All You Remember. What You Forgot Was My Fault. Benecton Press. 312 pages.– #3 Dux, P. E., Ivanoff, J., Asplund, C. LO., and Marois, R. 2007. Isolation of a Central Bottleneck of Information Processing with Time-Resolved fMRI. Neuron. 52 (6): 1109–1120– #4 Pierce, Tamyra, and Vaca, Roberto. 2007. Distracted: academic performance differences between teen users of MySpace and other communication technologies. Proceedings EISTA. Orlando, FL. July. http://www.cyber-inf.org/imsci2007/Program/html/program-5.htm

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Problems with losing focus due to persistent distractions

EXCERPT: An average worker who is in front of a computer all day will, on average, check e-mail 50 times and use instant messaging 77 times, according to RescueTime, a firm specializing in the way people use their computers. On average, people visit 40 Web sites during the workday. These interruptions, say researchers, cost more than $650 billion in lost productivity each year. Intel alone said it was losing $1 billion a year to electronic distractions — and it’s no wonder: A study at Microsoft showed that it took workers 24 minutes to get back to work after checking e-mail.

This kind of information is not exactly a state secret. Anyone who has earned a college degree knows that in order to pass an exam, you have to sit down in a quiet place and study over a prolonged period of time without interruptions. Designing the latest computer chip must be at least as daunting a task. In fact, Hewlett-Packard conducted a study that showed that electronically distracted workers scored 10 points lower on IQ tests, which is twice the degradation caused by smoking marijuana, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Does Multitasking Make You More Productive?

November 2nd, 2009

A whole generation of web workers has been raised on the idea that the more activities you can do at one time, the more of a productivity superstar you are. But is the ability to juggle Facebooking a friend; scanning an email; texting on your cell phone and tweeting about your latest technology tip — all at the same time — really such a good idea?

According to a recent study published in the August 24 edition of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Science s ” by Stanford researchers Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir and Anthony Wagner, the answer is an unqualified “no.”

Nass said the idea for the study came about because he would see students who seemed to be amazingly skillful at multitasking and wanted to learn what their secret was.

Nass and his colleagues began their research by locating a group of 100 students composed of both “high multitaskers” and “low multitaskers.” The high mutitaskers were those who routinely used four, five or more media at one time (texting, reading email, chatting on the phone etc.). The low multitaskers used, on average, no more than two media at one time. The goal of the study was to see which elements of multitasking the high multitasking group performed better at, when compared with the low multitasking group.

“We were shocked to find out that the high multitaskers did worse than the low multitaskers in all three basic aspects of successful multitasking,” says Nass. The three aspects the study examined were:

• The ability to focus on the relevant and ignore the irrelevant. In order to multitask well, you need to be able to very quickly decide between what’s important and what you are going to pay attention to, and what’s irrelevant. “High multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy,” says Nass. “Everything distracts them.”

• The ability to keep information well organized in the brain. If you think of the brain as a bunch of filing cabinets, the high multitaskers had messier cabinets than their lower multitasking counterparts, and had a harder time finding what they needed.

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• Being able to switch from one task to another. Good multitaskers need to be able to mentally go from one activity to the next, without significant cognitive downtime. The more the high multitaskers were required to do this, the worse they were at it.

The results of the study have lead Nass and his colleagues to conclude that one of two things is true. Either multitasking is harmful to high multitaskers’ brains and is worsening their ability to focus, or people who are high multitaksers are naturally bad at these things. “Either way,” says Nass, “multitasking is a problem, and people should not be deluded into thinking that it works. It hurts productivity, and it may be hurting your thinking process,” he says.

If all of this is not enough to make you stop and do one thing at a time, consider the fact that the Stanford study is not the first of its kind to point out that multitasking makes us stupid.

One report from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London found that when workers are constantly juggling emails, phone calls and text messages, their IQ falls ten points.

Another recent report by Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans found that when people switched back and forth between tasks, there was a substantial loss of efficiency and accuracy — in some cases, up to 50 percent.

Now are you convinced to put down the iPhone while you peruse the Internet? If so, to fight distraction and find your focus, here are a few hints excerpted from “Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day“:

• Create designated task times. By setting aside a selected time period to do all your phone calls, emails or errands at once, you will reduce the amount of time you spend going back and forth between them.

• Put a system in place that lets you capture all incoming to-dos in writing. Instead of feeling pressure to do the item “now” (lest you forget), your brain can relax, secure in the knowledge that you have the item identified and stored.

• Maintain a desktop inbox. Don’t just rely on your electronic mail box or filing system. By putting a physical inbox on your desk, you will be able to temporarily place items that need your attention in a location where you can easily find them.

• Turn off technology. The ding of an email coming in, the buzz of the BlackBerry etc. — all these seemingly harmless inputs can tempt you to stray from the job at hand and multitask.

Are you a high multitasker or a low multitasker? How do you think it affects your productivity?

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