Richard,

operationalize "multi-tasking" as moving between multiple tasks in an effort to complete both, rather than completing them sequentially - doing one until finished, then the other etc. I don't think that this definition is good for our Internet multitasking studies. I still think that we need some time framing. It's not multitasking in my opinion when I'm doing "task 1" 2 hours and "task 2" another 2 hours and than I continue in "task 1". I think we need to define "computer multitasking" better. We also need some multitasking categorisation, btw do you know some? I think there are several ways how to multitask and how it is used.

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. "degree of switching among windows" is better definition for our purposes in my opinion. But it's also only one but probably most common way how to multitask. It's still possible that several windows are parts of one task. (I work on an article and I opened SPSS, Word and some literature, I percieve this as one task or not?)

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 However, like much of basic research in psychology, it's strong in controls, but not real strong in ecological validity. You are absolutely right. These experimental psychology results don't say us much about the "real multitasking" on computers in my opinion. First of all, we are not able to concetrate absolutely all the time while working (8 and more hours daily). My main idea and hypothesis is that multitasking is the way how to RELAX. I'm not able to work and think 100% of the time, so I do "jumps" to other things: e.g. I'm working on an article but I interrupt the work several times: e.g. I write e-mails to students/friends but what is important, while writing the e-mail I relax some from more complicated work and perhaps my brain is also working "on background" on the article (??? many question marks). I know a lot of friends who work as programmers who multitask (relax) with real computer games - not many people are able to write programmes so many hours per day without rest, so they just use some type of "short" games for this purpose (Interent chess, icq games, but also reading discussion lists etc).

What do you think about this function of the multitasking? Regards, David