Brian Bell
Nov. 18th, 2015
English 111-03H
Sparks Article summary
Can Humans Really Multitask?
The short answer is no, they cannot. It is impossible for the human brain to be in
two places at once. Sarah Sparks’ article goes more in depth to this topic. She stated that,
“Not only can people not process two tasks simultaneously, but it also takes longer to
multitask than it would to do the individual tasks one after the other,” She proves this by
quoting the chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns
Hopkins, Steven G. Yantis who said, “there's a brief "bottleneck" in the prefrontal
cortex—the decision making part of the brain,” meaning that when you attempt to multitask
the brain must decide which task to try first, causing a millisecond of pausing, much like
how a video buffers. This can actually make it take much longer to complete these tasks
as apposed to just doing them one at a time. The problem is that teenagers (age 13 to 18)
use up to six different types of media a day. This actually delays the second task and
makes it take longer than if you just did one task at a time. This causes many people to
learn the horrible habit of "continuous partial attention," according to Mr. Rosen. Which
means that they cannot think on a deep level about one thing, becasue they've trained
themselves not to. This actually can lead to memory problems, in a study prefromed by
Stanford University researchers it showed that frequent multitaskers actually did worse on
memory tests than people who did not "Multitask". One of the forms of media that most
inhibits the learning process is the cellphone. While the student is focused on homework,
reading, testing, or another academic activity, if they get a text message, call, or other alert
their attention switches and it is hard to get back into that studying frame of mind and can
affect test scores rather drastically. There was a landmark case study known as the
"Marshmallow Test" in which children were put next to a marshmallow and if they didn't eat
it, they would be rewarded with two. The ones who had the ability to wait and be patient
had better test scores in their academic careers later on in life. This is due to the fact that
they were able to resist the temptation and focus on what was important. (Sparks)
Honestly, I do not think people are multitaskers or can be. There is a level of skill
involved in people who can effectively do this. In fact, sometimes there is no choice, such
as a busy office or other work environments. However, in the world of academia, this is a
hinderence, not a skill. Now, I “Multitask” almost every day. When I get home from school I
get on the computer, do homework, text my friends, play video games, and scroll through
social media. However, in order to do one of those things I have to stop doing the others
first. If I am in the middle of a heated battle against some aliens, I have to pause the game,
then pick up my phone to respond to whomever texted me. Or if I am doing homework, I
minimize the window to change whatever song I am listening to. I am a human and thus
cannot truly do two things at once without messing up one task or stopping to finish the
other.
Works Cited:
Ophir, Eyal, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner. "Cognitive Control in
Media Multitaskers." Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 106.37 (2009): 15583-5587. Pnas.org. PNAS, 15 Sept.
2009. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. <http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37
/15583.full.pdf>.
Sparks, Sarah D. "Studies on Multitasking Highlight Value of Self-Control."
Education Week. Editorial Projects in Education, 15 May 2012. Web.
18 Nov. 2015. <http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05
/16/31multitasking_ep.h31.html?tkn=PTWF
GpBwR5o7bKrnCvQZswL8Vr%2BlUoJB%2B62c&cmp=clp-
edweek>.
