Who Multi-Tasks and Why? Multi-Tasking Ability, Perceived Multi-Tasking Ability, Impulsivity, and Sensation Seeking

Tantek Multitasking (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

 

From the 29 January 2013 summary at Full Text Reports

 

The present study examined the relationship between personality and individual differences in multi-tasking ability. Participants enrolled at the University of Utah completed measures of multi-tasking activity, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. In addition, they performed the Operation Span in order to assess their executive control and actual multi-tasking ability.

The findings indicate that the persons who are most capable of multi-tasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. To the contrary, multi-tasking activity as measured by the Media Multitasking Inventory and self-reported cell phone usage while driving were negatively correlated with actual multi-tasking ability.

Multi-tasking was positively correlated with participants’ perceived ability to multi-task ability which was found to be significantly inflated. Participants with a strong approach orientation and a weak avoidance orientation – high levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking – reported greater multi-tasking behavior.

Finally, the findings suggest that people often engage in multi-tasking because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task. Participants with less executive control – low scorers on the Operation Span task and persons high in impulsivity – tended to report higher levels of multi-tasking activity.

 

 

 

Related articles

• If You Think You’re Good at Multitasking – You Probably Aren’t (richandco.wordpress.com)
• Study: If You Multitask Often, You’re Impulsive and Bad at Multitasking (theatlantic.com)
• Motorists Overrate Ability To Talk On Cell Phones When Driving (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Think you can multitask? Congratulations, you’re probably living a lie. (io9.com)

 

Why Some Types of Multitasking Are More Dangerous

 

In a new study that has implications for distracted drivers, researchers found that people are better at juggling some types of multitasking than they are at others.

 From the 23 July 2012 article at Science News Daily

Trying to do two visual tasks at once hurt performance in both tasks significantly more than combining a visual and an audio task, the research found.

Alarmingly, though, people who tried to do two visual tasks at the same time rated their performance as better than did those who combined a visual and an audio task — even though their actual performance was worse…

…

Participants who gave audio directions showed a 30 percent drop in visual pattern-matching performance. But those who used instant messaging did even worse — they had a 50 percent drop in pattern-matching performance.

In addition, those who gave audio directions completed more steps in the directions task than did those who used IM.

But when participants were asked to rate how well they did on their tasks, those who used IM gave themselves higher ratings than did those who used audio chat…

Related articles

• Instant Messaging Found to Slow Students’ Reading (education.com)
• What Multitasking Does To Our Brains (lifehacker.com.au)
• What Multitasking Does To Our Brains [Productivity] (lifehacker.com)