A Surprising Study About Multitasking

[Remiel]

It is rather uncharacteristic of me to post a topic here, let alone two, but I felt that I could not pass this one, seeing as it is an issue so important to societies current mindset.

http://ca.lifestyle.yahoo.com/family-relat..._of_information

Pardon the terrible news site, but it is not like they were the ones doing the study, hehehe...

Hopefully this is something that will be delved into deeper (it should be, you would think), as it has serious ramifications for our productivity.

[Bonam]

Interesting. I can't help but question the conclusions though, given the extremely qualitative rather than quantitative nature of the assertions, the unrelatedness of the tested tasks to real activities one might do while multitasking, and the silly and condescending statements attributed to one of the researchers about the subjects "loving" something or being "unable" to do something.

The self-selection method of sorting people into different sample groups, by giving them surveys as mentioned in the study, is also notoriously unreliable.

That being said, the findings could be true despite the flaws in the study. I don't know if more research is really needed though. All of the tested tasks would be far more affected by a person's general intelligence, memory, and reaction speed than they would be by whether they play computer games, chat on MSN, and talk on the phone at the same time or not.

[Remiel]

Well, the number one solution to a less than perfect study is to build a more foolproof test, is it not? Certainly measuring other factors that could account for differences should be part of further research, I would think. Also, even if not perfectly necessary, it would surely be research grants better spent than on some other things that are also studied.