Technically this is incorrect! They are better able to rapidly change the focus of attention. The article is the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Sam Nancy Baym <nbaym@ku.edu> wrote:

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 _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ --------------------------------- Get your own web address for just $1.99/1st yr. We'll help. Yahoo! Small Business.

Charlie, I've done consider work with ADHD in clinical settings. Attention deficit is more often rapid attention shifts, and inability to focus for protrated tasks. It is my theory that it is san evolutionary skill that was developed in prehistorical hunters. See it all as you walk through the forrest. Many ADHD people are very good at broad concetual thinking but do not do well in deep learning tasks. This is the problem in the school setting when they have to concentrate on tasks that require sitting still and focusing. It is a problem for teachers in the classroom who require "good behavior". Also there seems to be a gender issue in that there are not many females with ADHD and when they appear they are often seen as "bad girls". ADHD tends to produce excellent online gamers and fighter pilots. Sam Charlie Balch <charlie@balch.org> wrote: It is fascinating how we live in a world that is very different from that of even a few decades ago. The changes to our world expose different abilities. --------------------------------- All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.

Deanya and all: I think your point here is valid. This is why I decided that my study structure wasn't really able to answer the question I had. I wanted to know more about the way students blended multiple sources of stimulation while they were writing. For example, if they would report that the music they listened to help them form a sense of tone for their writing or if switching back and forth between talking to a friend about a paper and writing the paper itself was helpful. What I found instead was a set of discreet task switching that happened in really fast intervals and often didn't contribute to any one goal. As others have suggested, I don' t think there is such a thing as tru multitasking (ie truly accomplishing two or more tasks as once). Instead, what I think we may be seeing is an active task and a passive task going on at virtually the same time. For example, I can read and respond to email while listening to a podcast. My ears are paying attention to the item in the podcast I'm most interested in and when I hear a key word I'm looking for I stop reading and typing to listen. I can't really tell you what was discussed on the podcast before, only that it wasn't what I was listening for. Just as I can read and watch tv at the same time, when in reality what I'm doing is reading through commercials and pasisvely listening for the show to come back on to switch from reading to watching. Of course, if we follow this line of thinking, we have to assume that students who are engaged in IMing or emailing etc during class can only passively listen to discussion or lecture (assuming that the online activity is what is drawing their active attention). The skill I'm interested in is the ability to sort of passively survey other inputs while paying close attention to one important one. Sort of peripheral attention. What do you think? S On 10/15/06, Deanya Lattimore <mdlattim@syr.edu> wrote:

The term "multitasking" is still being used in all of these discussions to signify too many conflated variables to reach any significant conclusions from these data.

My point earlier was about processing differences. Auditory and visual processing are different things to me, and so I assume to some others as well -- probably dozens of different things. Measuring someone's ability to switch back and forth between windows to accomplish multiple tasks -- something that I can do with lightning speed -- says nothing about one's ability to listen in class and gloss over words on a screen at the same time, something that I would NOT be able to do with any measure of "success."

The windows task seems to be something visual for me -- I have no trouble processing many visual cues at one time. The paying attention to words task seems to be auditory for me: two different "noises" no matter whether I am reading them or hearing them.

We'll have to accept that we have different kinds of processing abilities that transcend distinctions between a "multitasking" and "non-multitasking" dichotomy before we'll figure out how to design studies that can really teach us something.

Has anyone done anything to establish baseline processing differences before the "multitasking" tasks were recorded?

Deanya

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Charlie, Cognitive neuro-science suggests that even our sensory array shifts attention in the same parsing behavior we see in computers. As I said several posts ago, some people are able to do this quite well and others not. The fact is that, this ability is normally distributed across human population and can be improved with practice. HCI research suggests that multiple screens provide an advantage in that it allows holding some data set in a fixed frame while allowing another to be dynamic. This research suggests that 2 dynamic screens effects performance adversely.For example writing computer code in one screen and testing it in another. The Apple people have been doing this for years while the PC crowd has been limited by the operating system (until recently). It all comes down to the human perception in real time. Based on a normative evaluation this parsing proves to be an impediment while listening to music and doing homework. It seems more efficient to study a short period, listen to relieve the boredom and then go back to studying. There is a vast body of research available in education, psychology and cognitive neuro-science. This is a very rich area for cross-disciplinary Netspace research. Sam Charlie Balch <charlie@balch.org> wrote: Great points. I happen to have a perfect opportunity to do a little research here. I'm teaching two sections of the same class. In one section, I'm lecturing in a computer lab and in the other in a traditional classroom. I do not discourage my students in the lab environment from using the computers while I lecture. (Those that want to yell at me for this should start a new thread.) Assuming that my lectures are the major factor in student learning, tests are meaningful, and that use of computers is a distracter, I'm going to compare the test results at the end of this semester. Charlie http://charlie.balch.org --------------------------------- All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.

On Sun, October 15, 2006 13:16, Charlie Balch wrote:

I believe the perspective of humans having multiple "processes" is appropriate. This is in conflict with your suggestion of "sensory array shifts need attention." While I have not reviewed the literature, my perception is that we respond to multiple sensory channels with various degrees of attention. The extent to which these sensory channels overlap creates conflict. Very different tasks will not be in conflict.

Much like interrupts in computer operating systems, the various areas that we perceive are brought to our attention when they become important. What qualifies as "important" is very individual. For instance, I'm more productive with music in the background, I think that this is because the area of me that expects music does not send out "Need Music" distracters and that other parts of me are not distracted by processing the appreciation of the background music.

A great discussion! Quite apart from the issue at hand (the various meanings & manifestations of multitasking), I'm struck by the way in which it's become common to describe human cognitive processes using the language of computer operations (e.g. Charlie's "'Need Music' distracters"). Though I guess this really *is* at the heart of the issue: we assume an equivalence -- or at least a translatability -- between multitasking as a function of microprocessors and as a function of consciousness. This equation carries a good deal of connotative baggage with it, chief being: which term (mind/processor) gets privileged as the dominant of the metaphor? From Charlie's comments above, I'd say it's processor over mind; that is, mind is being described in terms of computing architecture, rather than vice versa. I don't say any of this critically. I'm foursquare for metaphorizing. But I think it's important to remember that a metaphor *is* in play, and such "figures of thought" have a way of naturalizing themselves, carrying the conversation toward what seem like reasonable conclusions but which may diverge from the facts (of consciousness, computing, or both). Debates over the appropriatness/applicability of mind/computer comparisons raged during the first way of AI research in the 1950s, and has been taken up by writers such as Jonn Searle and Daniel C. Dennett (the latter of whom does claim that mental activity is a series of calculations). Of course, there are contrary positions -- http://www.kschroeder.com/blog/1120137696/index_html -- but for me, one problem with computational models of mind is that their overweening assumption of rationality, the implication that our heads do what they do with the sober purposefulness of Microsoft Office. It's reassuring to imagine ourselves multitasking in the same way our applications do; but that reassuring quality acts as an ideological lure, coaxing our attention (all too irrationally!) away from the alternative possibility that as subjects-of-consciousness we are divided, incomplete, distracted for reasons beyond our control. So yes, I'm talking about psychoanalysis, the unconscious, the alienated subject. The concepts are out of fashion, largely because of the hegemony of AI, neurology, and cognitive science, fields linked by their allegience to the mind-as-computer model. In defense of psychoanalysis, all I can say is that my own multitasking is a fitful and unpredictable affair, its messiness itself displaying striking patterns. How often have I been trying to hold two lines of thought simultaneously while a third, uninvited thought obsessively intervenes? Or unable to retrieve a name from my inner "database," though it's on the tip of my tongue and I *should* remember it? Or uttering an incorrect but symptomatically related term, i.e. a Freudian slip, instead of what I intended to say? The psychopathology of everyday life returns as an entropic degradation in the integrity of mental data, interfering with its checksums, corrupting its archives, producing lossy compression. At these times I feel at the whim of my mental processes rather than at their helm. Regards, -- Bob Rehak Visiting Assistant Professor Film and Media Studies Swarthmore College Associate Editor Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal http://anm.sagepub.com/

Hey Charlie! To make this study more useful, here're some suggestions for isolating variables -- (yes, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I want to point out how many conflating variables there are to some of these studies...PLEASE don't feel like I'm picking on you. I believe that a lot can be gained through qualitative messy methodology, but not as many generalizations can be made). So: First, I'd say you'll need to establish baseline proficiencies in some way: how they're doing in this subject when they come to you. How are you going to measure their test results at the end of the semester? You'll probably need a similar pretest to see what they come to you doing and knowing since previous knowledge is one variable. Another key factor could be the population in the two groups: is there a reason people had to take the class at different times? Did one section fill up quicker? There may be people in one section, say at 10am, who would have preferred, knowing that they work better then, to be in the 2pm section. There may be a substantial number of certain kinds of majors who have their other classes at one of the times so that could skew your results. My 8am section is heavy with football players, for example; a 4pm section would have practically none, as they are discouraged from taking classes that will interfere in practice time. Do they all feel that they took the class at their optimal functioning time, or where do they rate it, say, on a Likert scale? This could skew a section. Next, what is their previous level of computing functioning? Do they see computers themselves as distractors or are they so familiar with computing tasks that they are part of the picture already? You'll want to measure students' anxiety level, experience / use or current performance functioning to see how they are capable of using the computers. I'll bet that Sarah would be far less distracted by checking her email during class than many people would; I'll bet that she has filters set on her email already and mailboxes set up and she knows about what she'll find when she checks email. Even if you're watching to see what students are doing in class on computers, you probably won't be able to gauge how distracting that is unless you also have some baseline about how they currently use computers in the first place. Again, how do they process information now? How do they study best and how do they learn best? These questions might include whether they listen to music or watch tv while they study for tests. But they could also include such far-reaching factors as memory retention of information presented visually vs. auditorily. There may also be "manipulatives" learners in the class who will learn better if they are tactically engaged with something -- maybe even the keyboard -- that would throw off your results if you hadn't tested for along the way. I teach writing, and I find that people who are "touch" learners will learn better when their hands are doing something -- doodling, taking notes, keyboarding etc. would all conflate your results for manipulative vs. non-manipulative learners. What subjects do they see themselves "good" at presently? Do they currently have anxieties about your class subject or "resistances" to being in the class that may encourage them to seek distraction in any form, even if it includes daydreaming? How do they measure their own interest in the class and subject at the outset? This might be something you assume to be equal between classes, but it may not be. Some people want to get their "bad" classes out of the way; others put them off. If you have a bunch in an early section who took it because they're no good at it, it could skew the section. You'll want to monitor how they use class time. If they are in the computer lab, monitoring whether they use the computers during class is only the first level. Are they playing games? surfing? searching? working on a paper for another class? IMing? How would they rate their own levels of distraction for the tasks that they are attempting to do? How are you going to decide statistical significance in the test differences at the end? Are you going to quantify the results as groups, or measure individuals' learning qualitatively? Whew! There're still lots of factors involved that could skew results: more people with children in one class than in another, for example; how much time they spend on homework for the class could be another. How tired or practiced you are in presenting your information in one class or the other. You might want to "fix" a few class days for the study -- days that you're particularly going to test knowledge that was gained on only that day, and design a self-reflective questionnaire that asks about some of these variables that the students would take after the test. You could see if you find correlations across data that way, too. At any rate, it would be useful to your own generalizations if you set out assumptions ahead of time. Yours in constructive method implementation -- Deanya (bracing for the onslaught of criticism) :-D. On Sunday, October 15, 2006, at 11:03 AM, Charlie Balch wrote:

Great points. I happen to have a perfect opportunity to do a little research here. I'm teaching two sections of the same class. In one section, I'm lecturing in a computer lab and in the other in a traditional classroom. I do not discourage my students in the lab environment from using the computers while I lecture. (Those that want to yell at me for this should start a new thread.) Assuming that my lectures are the major factor in student learning, tests are meaningful, and that use of computers is a distracter, I'm going to compare the test results at the end of this semester.

Charlie http://charlie.balch.org

Charlie -- Charlie Balch wrote:

Darn. There goes a good idea for a paper.

You know, one great thing about research is that it's all partial; that's why that section exists to discuss methodology and why that section exists to discuss the results. I was always taught that even research that presented "flawed data" was good because it got done. Write it up and send it out and suggest that researchers attempting to replicate the study do a few things differently. I'd love to see the article; I'll bet that you'll identify some concerns that others would invest in extending the research to test for themselves. :-D. Deanya On Sunday, October 15, 2006, at 01:24 PM, Charlie Balch wrote:

Deanya, Great points. I often wonder if there is such a thing as good data.

I've got two classes that I'm thinking of comparing. One class meets Monday-Wednesday and the other Tuesday-Thursday. Both are at the same time. I think the student population is about the same. I did not do a pre-test and agree with you that should be done before an intervention.

Darn. There goes a good idea for a paper. Charlie

-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org On Behalf Of Deanya Lattimore Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] multitasking

Hey Charlie! To make this study more useful, here're some suggestions for isolating variables -- ...

Richard, Thanks. Both this and your next post add much to my understanding of multi-tasking. I particularly like the idea of meta-schemas and how multiple "tasks" can be additive instead of distracting. I happen to have a three monitor computer system and find the ability to have multiple screens which often have multiple windows available at the same time invaluable in both research and web programming. (Feel free to give my email address charlie@balch.org to your student researching this area). For instance, I often have my code displayed on one screen, a database table or two on another screen, and the results of the code on the third screen. For research, I usually just use two screens with a downloaded article on one screen and my writing on a second screen. Occasionally I'll have something on a spreadsheet on the third screen. I believe that multi-monitor systems will become much more common. I don't IM at all with my students but I did find your comment about Email interesting. When I'm not using the third computer screen for something else, it shows my Email. When I measure my productivity by how much I type and read, Email is a major distracter. On the other hand, I routinely listen to music and/or radio talk shows and that does not reduce my productivity unless I'm distracted enough to take my hands away from the keyboard to call in and get a prize for a trivia question. I must also admit that Email such as yours provides me with information that any person with a love of knowledge would enjoy. Perhaps I should be completing my dissertation or talking to my wife but this topic is much fun and thus distracting. Unfortunately, my research topic is on the creation of a research based Internet survey system (http://birat.net) and my wife refuses to talk about research anymore so I suppose this Email was distracting instead of additive to my meta-schema. Or did I just slip something in that makes the time I took away from my wife and dissertation additive? I think we need to think more about what successful completion of tasks and efficiency mean. For instance, who has been more productive when a person has completed three tasks to 75% of optimal accomplishment in the time that another person completed a single task to 100% of optimum accomplishment? Of course the nature of the tasks matter. I would not want to undergo surgery when my doctor is *distracted.* On the other hand, if my doctor said that she worked better with music, I'd say crank it up. Grins and I'm back to my dissertation after a chat with my wife, Charlie http://charlie.balch.org -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of richard hall Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 4:47 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] multitasking In fact, I have a student doing a thesis on a study of the usability of quad panel displays, which has many multi-tasking aspects. First there is definitely a literature in experimental psychology on multi-tasking, which pretty strong suggests it's bad - the sum of performance on tasks performed in sequence is better than performance on the tasks performed simultaneously (which is operationalized as going back and forth between the two). However, like much of basic research in psychology, it's strong in controls, but not real strong in ecological validity. One of the classic studies, involved tasks involving identification of basic shapes. (rebenstein et al., Journal of Experimental Psych) and there are a number of others. Basically the idea is that you develop a schema/framework that is guiding you in one task and it takes additional resources every time you move to another task and then apply another schema - Besides the fact that this is not a real task anyone would ever do when multi-tasking, differences with the applications of multi-tasking as we are discussing them are that the students may well have developed sort of meta schemas (my term) from lots of practice so that all the multi-tasks together are sort of one big task. More importantly, in my student's research he had participants complete a web design task using dreamweaver, while using video screen-capture tutorials and he defined multi-tasking as degree of switching among windows (not necessarily monitors) and found that multi-tasking actually helped performance. Of course, in his case the multi-tasks were sort of like sub-tasks of one big task. So, his interpretation is that multi-tasking can actually be effective, when the multiple tasks help one another - all are aiming at one goal - not indpendent tasks. For the record, we publish all the thesis on line and we'll do that after he defends. More anecdotally, I will say, in my experience, it's not very fun to lecture or carry on a meeting or a conversation when your "audience" is doing other stuff, though I'm not a big fan of lecture much anymore anyway. Finally, my students are always trying to get me to IM and I find it annoying in the same way the phone is annoying and, for the same reason that I really like email. I like responding to stuff when I have a break in my tasks, and don't like the invasive nature of these tools that put the burden on the responder to respond, when it seems to me that the burden should be on the one who initiates the conversation to wait until the responder wants to respond (if that makes sense). ... Richard -- Richard H. Hall http://richardhhall.org On 10/14/06 12:12 PM, "Barry Wellman" <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

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.

Alas, the only study I know of is our own (actually mostly Anabel's) observations, interviews and surveys of a high-tech orgnization:

Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 in The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "From the Computerization Movement to Computerization: A Case Study of a Community of Practice." Forthcoming in Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Ken Kraemer and Margaret Elliott. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2007.

Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________

Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________

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