Home » Brain Fitness » Currently Reading:

Brain Fitness Tip of the Week: Multitasking

August 28, 2009 Brain Fitness No Comments

Multitasking, many people say, is on the rise. Multitasking is doing two or more things at once. If you watch the news, you can see evidence. Bus drivers sending text messages, and the nearly universal practice of having conversations on the telephone while driving.

A recent study shows that people who habitually multitask actually are worse at switching back and forth between mental tasks than people who don’t. A study reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (early edition; August 23, 2009) shows that multitaskers have trouble screening out irrelevant information while performing several tasks. Eyal Ophir and his colleagues at Stanford University used several cognitive tasks including the same n-back task used to in other studies to train working memory.

People who reported the highest use of several media simultaneously (e.g., watching television, surfing the Web, and texting) were more likely to be distracted and performed more poorly on the n-back task.

So what do we make of earlier studies that show that n-back training may improve working memory, fluid intelligence, and even change brain receptors? This may be a case of comparing things that are superficially similar but basically different. Habitual multitasking may lead people to perform more poorly on a variety of tasks, most notably, driving. This habitual multitasking should be distinguished from the working memory training in which the n-back task is used. Working memory training can improve performance, but it may be that constant multitasking does not.

Comment on this Article:







Subscribe to MB Fitness


Subscribe and Get Email Updates for Every Article

You'll have each new article delivered directly to your inbox, and won't miss a single brain fitness update.

Enter your e-mail address in the form below. You'll receive a verification e-mail and will start receiving updates right away.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

RSS Worry and GAD Blog

  • Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
    the contrast between Tibetan monks’ apparent calm, evident even on brain scans, and her own anxiety disorder. Ms. Warner says that she suffers from panic disorder, […]
  • Do GAD and Depression Overlap?
    Are generalized anxiety disorder and depression the same thing? New research says probably not. […]
  • Simple Ways to Cope with Anxiety without Medications
    With all the uncertainty in the economy, more and more people are asking about how to manage anxiety. Although several types of medications can be helpful in coping with anxiety, some of them (drugs in the group of benzodiazepines, such as Valium, Xanax, and Ativan) can actually have a negative impact on your memory. Other […]

Brain Fitness

Brain Fatigue

Man sleeping on grass

An article in today’s New York Times reports on the ways that being constantly online can affect cognition. More and more research has shown that learning depends on not only on spending time with new material, but also on having downtime. Researchers have long suspected that some form of downtime …

Training Affects Cerebral Blood Flow

iStock_000004392166Small.jpg

A report from researchers now has shown that cognitive training can increase blood flow to parts of the brain critical for attention and memory. The report in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (March 12, 2010) used functional MRI to evaluate how a training program affected gray matter thickness and resting blood …

Physical Activity and Cognitive Impairment

mi6

A new study shows that physical activity may reduce the risk of developing cognitive impairment. The INVADE study, completed almost 4,000 people older than 55 years, showed that people who engaged in some form of physical activity three times a week or more were less likely to develop memory problems …

Is Overtime Hazardous to Your Health?

Stressful commuting in a subway

Lots of people work more than 40 hours a week. Now a major British study shows that large amounts of overtime work is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease. Since to a large extent heart health is also brain health, it looks as though overtime work might …

Meditation as Brain Training

mi19

Mindfulness meditation as practiced over a long period by experts makes clear changes in someone’s brain function. But what about those of us who don’t have a few years to sit in a monastery in the Himalayas? A new study shows that even brief meditation practice can improve attention. Researchers …