Why Multitasking Doesn’t Work?

“Heavy multitaskers are actually worse at multitasking than most people.”

Experiment - cognitive & memory tasks with distraction:

• Self-described multitaskers performed much worse than people who preferred to focus on single tasks.
• Multitaskers couldn’t perform better on any elements of the test
• Maybe chronic multitaskers are hyperdistractible people, but there’re worries that media multitasking might actually be destroying students’ capacity for reasoning

-> debate: should laptops be allowed in classrooms?

Attention:

• is generated by conscious effort
• is an unwilled effect of outside forces.