This article from the Associate Press Science Writer Randolphe E. Schmid (found through MomLogic) contains some of the funniest quotes I’ve read in a long time. I’ve highlighted them for your convenience. Enjoy!  

AP-The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That’s the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.

“The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked,” Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford’s communications department, said in a telephone interview.

The researchers studied 262 college undergraduates, dividing them into high and low multitasking groups and comparing such things as memory, ability to switch from one task to another and being able to focus on a task. Their findings are reported in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When it came to such essential abilities, people who did a lot of multitasking didn’t score as well as others, Nass said.

Still to be answered is why the folks who are worst at multitasking are the ones doing it the most.

It’s sort of a chicken-or-egg question.

“Is multitasking causing them to be lousy at multitasking, or is their lousiness at multitasking causing them to be multitaskers?” Nass wondered. “Is it born or learned?”

In a society that seems to encourage more and more multitasking, the findings have social implications, Nass observed. Multitasking is already blamed for car crashes as several states restrict the use of cell phones while driving. Lawyers or advertisers can try to use irrelevant information to distract and refocus people to influence their decisions.

In the study, the researchers first had to figure out who are the heavy and light multitaskers. They gave the students a form listing a variety of media such as print, television, computer-based video, music, computer games, telephone voice or text, and so forth.

The students were asked, for each form of media, which other forms they used at the same time always, often, sometimes or never.

The result ranged from an average of about 1.5 media items at the low end to more than four among heavy multitaskers.

Then they tested the abilities of students in the various groups.

For example, ability to ignore irrelevant information was tested by showing them a group of red and blue rectangles, blanking them out, and then showing them again and asking if any of the red ones had moved.

The test required ignoring the blue rectangles. The researchers thought people who do a lot of multitasking would be better at it.

“But they’re not. They’re worse. They’re much worse,” said Nass. The high media multitaskers couldn’t ignore the blue rectangles. “They couldn’t ignore stuff that doesn’t matter. They love stuff that doesn’t matter,” he said.

Perhaps the multitaskers can take in the information and organize it better? Nope.

“They are worse at that, too,” Nass said.

“So then we thought, OK, maybe they have bigger memories. They don’t. They were equal” with the low multitaskers, he added.

Finally, they tested ability to switch from one task to another by classifying a letter as a vowel or consonant, or a number as even or odd. The high multitaskers took longer to make the switch from one task to the other.

This particularly surprised the researchers, considering the need to switch from one thing to another in multitasking.

“They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing,” lead author Eyal Ophir said. “The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.”

The next step is to look into what multitaskers are good at and see if the difference between high and low multitaskers is one of “exploring” versus “exploiting” information.

“High multitaskers just love more and more information. Their greatest thrill is to get more,” he said. On the other hand, “exploiters like to think about the information they already have.”

The research was funded by Stanford Major Grant, Volkswagen Grant, Nissan Grant and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spaceninja/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I find myself in the pleasant predicament of living in the same area as my Alma mater. From time to time I run over to the campus for one reason or another. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to drop off some German and Bulgarian books (so they could find a better home) and took the girls with me. I arrived on campus with a double stroller during the last ten minutes of the hour. This is the time when everyone is rushing from one class to the next. Talk about timing. As I tried to maneuver through the crowds and snow piles I watch the students around me. Aside from thinking how young they all looked, I saw students waving at friends and hollering their hellos. I remembered my days on campus were pretty much the same. By my last year I rarely walked anywhere without running into a friend or student from the GE class I tutored for. I smiled as I remembered those happy years spent on this campus. I even found myself looking, hopelessly, around for a familiar face. Where were all MY friends and associates? Since all my peers had left the campus years earlier I decided to visit some of my favorite professors. They were all, conveniently, in their offices. Redemption! Except the one I actually had questions for. He has retired. Man, I am old for being so young!

With this experience fresh on my mind, my girls and I started the new year by returning to the library by our house for their Laptime program. After Laptime was over, I was visiting with a few moms. I talked with the Children’s Librarian. Former neighbors, current neighbors and even my mom walked by! (My mom stopped, of course.) Another mom asked me about when I would be doing Laptime this month. I was grinning from ear to ear with all this social love happening right there in one of my favorite buildings. In a flash of insight I saw the library converge with and then replace my beloved university campus as the hub of my social life. The bustle is subdued and there are children’s voices at every corner and I am in heaven.

*Photo by Spaz Du Zoo