Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price

Think you can watch videos, make cell phone calls and send e-mails all at once? Stanford experts say even trying can impair your cognitive control. Communication professor Cliff Nass and researcher Eyal Ophir explain why.

Stanford University:
http://www.stanford.edu/

Stanford News Article:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/au...

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

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  Education

[mykmmc]

what did he say????????????? i was checking my email and shaving my dog

[ChaosmanOne]

Did you just "proof positive" that all those fucking asshat Facebook, iPhone, text message, iPod, fluff brains are ACTUALLY fluff brains! Brilliant!!

[gukonni]

And isn't this just about focus? You focus on something and you do better. That just makes sense. However, if that something is doing the task equally well whether you're present or not then you're not gaininng anything by staring at it.

[gukonni]

Or if I take the clothes out of hte wash machine and put them in the drier and then put a new load in the wash machine. Is that not multi-tasking?

The difference here I think is when we're the ones having to do the task AND do multiple tasks. In this case we have ot do it one step at a time. However, if it's something else that's doing the task then we can indeed mult-task. We just have to create a shedule for ourselves that's step by step.

[gukonni]

Ok so if I turn the virus scanner on and then go out of my room to cook something while ti's running and ALSO take out the garbage, am I not multi-tasking? Granted, I'm not the one that's running the virus scanner - that's my computers job - but I am using my time effectively, no? Better than staring at my screen and waiting 20 minutes for it to finish before making something to eat and taking the trash out.

[currymakersuperfly]

would this have something to do with dopamine?

[CheaaaBree]

he sounded like he needed to blow his nose...

OH WAIT, HE CAN'T BLOW AIR OUT OF HIS NOSE AND HOLD A TISSUE AT THE SAME TIME.

multitasking...

[MrTrojanic]

I would like to have seen the actual experiment they performed and not just a small 20 second snippet.

[xxxEMINENTxxx]

LMAOOOOO,NICE COMMENT

[NeoMatudio]

This explains why there are road sign like this: "don't use your cellphone while driving." I strongly believe with the outcome of your study.

[ChipSelekt]

They clearly didn't use anyone from the Computer Science department