As this is the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS, I wonder if anyone has done any Research on multitasking -- to address the interesting conjectures that a bunch of people have.
I don't have the citation, and it's not internet research, but the pscyhologist Barbara Rogoff (http://psych.ucsc.edu/faculty/brogoff/index.php?Home) has done some cross cultural work between Utah, USA and South America and shown that the South American mothers are better able to multitask than the American mothers. What she did was to bring a toy for the child to play with while she interviewed the mother that was too difficult for the child to figure out alone. The American mothers had to alternate between attending to the interview and the child, while the South American mothers (and I apologize for not remembering the country in which she was working) could do both simulatneously. Nancy