The High Price Of Multitasking Willingham Daniel T New York

The High Price Of Multitasking Willingham Daniel T New York Times

Not only do smartphones provide unprecedented access to information, they provide unprecedented opportunities to multitask. Any activity can be accompanied by music, selfies or social media updates. Of course, some people pick poor times to tweet or text, and lawmakers have stepped in. Forty-eight states have banned texting while driving. In Honolulu, it’s illegal to text or even look at your phone while crossing the street, and in the Netherlands they’ve banned texting while biking.

But legislation won’t proscribe all situations in which multitasking is unwise; you need to self-regulate. Understanding how the brain multitasks and why we find multitasking so appealing will help you gauge the hazard of pulling out your phone. Multitasking feels like doing two things simultaneously, so it seems the danger lies in asking one mental process to do two incompatible things — for texting drivers, watching the screen and the road. A lot of lawmakers must think that way, because 20 states have instituted bans on driving using a hand-held phone while still allowing hands-free calls. Yet hands-free or hand-held makes no difference — they impair driving equivalently as far as external hazards go.

Why? You actually manipulate your phone only briefly for voice calls. The real problem is the toggling of attention between the conversation and the road. Even simple tasks can’t be done simultaneously; you switch between them, and that affects performance. In a classic experiment, subjects viewed a digit-letter pair: for example, “C7.” A signal instructed people to classify the letter as a vowel or nonvowel or the digit as odd or even. After the response, a new stimulus and a new signal appeared. When the classification task switched, people responded about 20 percent slower than when it was repeated, because switching requires extra steps: resetting your goal (“ignore digit, attend to letter”) and reloading the mental rule (“judge it as vowel or consonant”). The cost of shuffling goals and mental rules is harmless if there’s predictable downtime during one or both tasks. As a conference call turns to an agenda item irrelevant to you, go ahead and answer email. Multitasking while driving is so dangerous because driving requires all of your attention at unpredictable times. People sense this, and when on the phone they drive slower and increase their following distance, but they are far too confident that these measures mitigate risk.

Fifty-nine percent of adults, young and old, admit to using their phones while driving. This overconfidence extends to other activities. A 2015 survey showed that a majority of students who use social media, text or watch TV while studying think that they can still comprehend the material they’re studying. This confidence is especially understandable for very simple tasks. Everyone knows texting behind the wheel is dangerous, but listening to music or chatting with a passenger seems so undemanding as to be innocuous.

Yet both measurably compromise driving. If that’s surprising, consider whether you’ve ever turned down the radio or shushed passengers when the road turned icy or when you were looking for an address. Even walking, which feels like something we do on autopilot, is not immune. Experiments in virtual environments show that pedestrians are more likely to be hit by a vehicle when crossing the street if they are listening to music. But people don’t multitask solely because they see no harm in it; they perceive benefits.

They say they multitask for efficiency, to fight boredom or to keep up with social media. Music, likely the most common variety of multitasking, is added to tasks because it heightens arousal (for example, your heart rate increases), making it easier to stick with a long drive or a tedious textbook. Music was once common on factory assembly lines; the British Broadcasting Corporation offered a radio program for this purpose, “Music While You Work,” from 1940 until 1967. Thus, even if you fully appreciate the cognitive cost, you might tolerate it in exchange for the emotional lift. Parents disapprove when their child studies with deadmau5 blasting because they compare that with studying in silence.

But the child calculates that without the music, he wouldn’t study. This trade-off of cognition and emotion suggests a few principles to better manage your multitasking. First, hoping for efficiency by combining two pure productivity tasks — say, composing a letter while following a presentation — is folly. That’s all cognitive cost and no emotional benefit. Second, be realistic about what poor task performance (when driving, for example, or operating machinery) might mean, given that you’re not as good at multitasking as you believe.

If you’re not ready to eliminate secondary tasks, at least be ready to ditch them in the moment. I don’t expect music to disappear from cars, but consider hitting mute if traffic gets dense or road conditions worsen. Third, see if you can get the emotional lift without the cognitive cost. Instead of multitasking, take more rest breaks, and get your social media fix during a break. People will choose to multitask.

But we should, at the very least, be fully aware of how that choice affects us and the potential consequences for ourselves and others. We need to pay attention to how much — or how little — we are paying attention. Daniel T. Willingham (@DTWillingham) is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author, most recently, of “The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads.” The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles.

Paper For Above instruction

Title: The High Price of Multitasking and Its Cognitive Implications

In an era dominated by digital connectivity, the phenomenon of multitasking has become ubiquitous, profoundly impacting cognitive performance and safety. Daniel T. Willingham’s article, "The High Price of Multitasking," explores the psychological underpinnings of multitasking behaviors, particularly emphasizing the risks associated with dividing attention across multiple activities such as texting while driving, listening to music, or engaging with social media during study sessions. This paper aims to examine the cognitive costs of multitasking, the misconception of efficiency it fosters, and strategies to mitigate its adverse effects.

Cognitive psychology reveals that multitasking is not truly doing two things simultaneously but rather rapidly switching focus between tasks, which incurs mental costs. An experiment cited by Willingham demonstrates that task-switching can slow response times by about 20% due to the cognitive load involved in resetting goals and mentally reloading rules. This indicates that multitasking, especially in critical situations like driving, compromises performance and safety. The misconception that hands-free devices are safer than hand-held phones is debunked, as both forms impair driving equally because the primary issue is attention toggling rather than physical manipulation of devices.

Furthermore, overconfidence in one's multitasking capabilities exacerbates risky behaviors. Surveys show that a significant portion of adults and students believe they can multitask effectively without impairing comprehension or safety, which is a dangerous illusion. For instance, listening to music or engaging in social media during tasks like studying or walking subtly impairs focus and increases accident risk, as confirmed by virtual environment studies indicating pedestrians using music are more likely to be hit by vehicles.

The primary motivation behind multitasking includes a desire for efficiency, boredom alleviation, or social connectivity. Music’s historical use during factory work underscores its emotional appeal, which can compensate for cognitive costs. Recognizing this trade-off, Willingham offers practical principles: combining two purely cognitive tasks yields no emotional benefit and should be avoided; during crucial moments, secondary tasks should be minimized; and emotional benefits can sometimes be achieved without cognitive costs, such as taking breaks instead of multitasking.

Ultimately, the article emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and regulation in multitasking behaviors to prevent potential harm. By understanding the limitations of cognitive switching and the tendency for overconfidence, individuals can make more informed decisions about when and how to divide their attention, thus enhancing safety and cognitive efficiency in everyday activities.

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