Research Suggests Brain Has a 2-Task Limit for Multitasking 257
suraj.sun writes with a story from LiveScience about just how much attention you can devote to each of the tasks on hand that scream for it: "The brain is set up to manage two tasks, but not more, a new study suggests. That's because, when faced with two tasks, a part of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) divides so that half of the region focuses on one task and the other half on the other task. This division of labor allows a person to keep track of two tasks pretty readily, but if you throw in a third, things get a bit muddled. 'What really the results show is that we can readily divide tasking. We can cook, and at the same time talk on the phone, and switch back and forth between these two activities,' said study researcher Etienne Koechlin of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. 'However, we cannot multitask with more than two tasks.'"
I must be the human iPad (Score:5, Funny)
So how come I can't walk and chew gum at the same time?
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An iPad can multitask more, it can do 3 tasks at once: you can put a beer glass, the bottle and some food on it at the same time!
Doing 4 tasks right now? Can you beat it? (Score:3, Funny)
That's 4. Can anyone beat that?
Re:Doing 4 tasks right now? Can you beat it? (Score:5, Funny)
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When you practice doing two tasks simultaneously, they become a new, single task. How do good drummers play syncopated beats? You learn a multitude of "keeping the beat" tasks involving many combinations of common patterns on the bass drum, hi-hat, and ride cymbal, then you learn a variety of syncopated beat tasks to play "overtop" of the other task. (You also have to learn strategies for performing these tasks at the same time, especially when you have to borrow a foot or hand from the keeping-the-beat
Re:I must be the human iPad (Score:4, Funny)
I can eat popcorn and chew gum at the same time.
How quickly can I get my boss to ignore this? (Score:4, Funny)
Bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
I call bullshit. Right now, I'm replying to this Slashdot article from my cell phone, eating a quick breakfast, and driving my car in morning traffic. I'm doing all three with the utmost saf
Practice (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about practice. Practice, practice, practice.
The first time you drive a car (especially a manual), there are so many tasks.
After a while of practice, your brain configures itself to automatically make those tasks into a subtask, and groups them all into one task - "driving".
Of course some people may never be able to do it. But I think a high proportion of people can. And I bet there are some people who can learn to do it after very short time - just like some people can learn to juggle very quickly, and there was that recent article about supertaskers.
I'm sure Michael Schumacher can eat breakfast and type on a cellphone and still do F1 laps faster than I can, when I'm just doing F1 laps (just driving, not eating or doing other stuff).
The trouble with most people is they're trying to do "for real" without practicing _properly_. That's like trying to juggle chainsaws, without learning how to juggle balls first, and then gradually working your way up under controlled conditions.
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I would think driving a bus while texting or eating would be even more dangerous.
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I am little more concerned at the apparent theft of a vehicle. I hope there were at least no passengers on board.
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I'd think that would be a matter of suppressing a reflex rather than conscious prioritization. There'd be a lot fewer Bene Gesserit if the gom jabber test candidate wasn't told what w
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Sure. But that gets into repetitive muscle training that no longer requires a lot of conscious thought. Ever try and learn the piano? You only get good when you practice enough so your fingers 'automatically' go where you want them to. As soon as you start thinking about finger placement consciously, you miss tempo.
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Also learn to steer with your chin, WHILE you're eating something...
Bundling? (Score:2)
Seriously though, you might be able to learn how to do that if you could practice doing that 100 times every day, for a month under safe simulated conditions (e.g. driving simulator, and simulated eating too, otherwise you'd end up killing yourself by overeating ;) ).
It's all about practice. Practice, practice, practice.
When I first started practicing driving, it seemed like a chaotic cloud of different tasks -- pedal, clutch, brake, steering wheel. With time, they seemed to "bundle" together into one single task, mentally treating the separate threads as one process. I think a certain amount of shared context is needed though. Things like "fiddle with radio" or "adjust GPS" still feel like a separate task, no matter how many times I do it.
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> Things like "fiddle with radio" or "adjust GPS" still feel like a separate task, no matter how many times I do it.
How many times have you actually _practiced_ it? You can't just do it a few times a day to get better at it. It has to become like walking to you, so that you don't think of the separate things to do to fiddle with the radio. You just think "radio channel #1" and it happens - the rest of your brain goes and does it.
That said, some people never ever learn how to fly a conventional helicopter
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Just from my own experience, it seems like there are a bunch of different things going on when you try to multitask.
There are things you have practiced so much that your brain no longer has to think about them - like say, walking, or driving when there are no changes in the road or other cars. Let's call these "background processes" although in terms of computer architecture it's more like you've delegated the work to a specialized unit like a GPU. I can generally walk and do multiple things at once with th
what is a single task to the brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is talking on the phone really a single task? Is cooking? Surely each of those is made up of countless sub-tasks even if you don't consciously think about them.
Re:what is a single task to the brain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is talking on the phone really a single task? Is cooking? Surely each of those is made up of countless sub-tasks even if you don't consciously think about them.
If you were just saying random words, then perhaps not. But if you are discussing the new project at work, or what little Johnny did at school, or even about sports, it requires pulling in previous experiences, remembering specific events, drawing conclusions, etc., which are "subroutines" in a single task, communicating. A phone conversation can actually take more brain power than driving down the highway. Think about it, when someone is driving and talking on the phone, it is obvious that the cell phone requires more attention than driving. As for being sub-tasks, all tasks are generally linear subtasks that would qualify as a single task.
Perhaps that is why people tend to stray into the other lane when driving/talking on the cell. A third activity comes in or they have to fork a thought for consideration during the conversation, and they run out of brainpower/memory, so the least important activity (driving) gets swapped out for a second. Humans just need more RAM.
How about that, a computer analog for a car problem, instead of the other way around!
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We have plenty of storage. I'm thinking we could use some more on-die cache.
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Humans seem to have about 4KB of RAM and one freaking huge hard drive.
Think about it - the access latency matches up! ;)
It should be noted that while we have a HyperThreading prefrontal cortex, we also have cores available doing background tasks, like managing movement, processing what we hear and see, alerting us to sudden movement/danger, etc.
Re:what is a single task to the brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially in men, right brains don't talk. So that's exclusively left-brain.
Driving (at least the direction & speed control) is right brain. The time it's most likely to engage your left brain is when you have to consciously think ie planning your route, adapting to unusual road conditions. Apart from that driving & talking is fairly easy for experienced drivers. Typically, drivers talk in a monotonous voice as inflection is right hemisphere.
Try adding a column of figures eg restaurant bill and having a conversation at the same time - pretty damn hard because both are left brain. So there we're only single-tasking.
I think what this research shows is that we use both sides of our brain when we're single-tasking. Some areas of the brain are very specialised but other areas can be trained to perform similar functions (for some people, the right hemisphere spelling a word would be an unnatural task). If we're doing two tasks for which different hemispheres of the brain can assigned one of the tasks, then the brain is quite adept at dividing up the workload.
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Thanks for sharing your insights... I am left handed so spend most of my mind activity in the right side of the brain. Often times when I am multi-tasking such as talking while driving... I find that I constantly shift the focus between the two tasks.
As an example if I was making a left turn in downtown St. Louis with all the one-way streets, crazy drivers, and pedestrians then I would stop talking while executing the turn. Once the turn is completed then I start talking again. I am the same way when debug
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How far do you take the right/left hemisphere argument? Do you subscribe to a J. Jaynes [wikipedia.org] breakdown of a once bicameral mind? Has the language centric left hemisphere put a ring in the nose of an affective, right hemisphere?
I can't see it that simply but YMMV.
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There are many challenges like this:
Re:what is a single task to the brain? (Score:5, Funny)
Is talking on the phone really a single task?
According to Steve Jobs, a definitive "yes" (until version 4 is released anyway).
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Women can do it better.. (Score:2)
Somewhere not so long ago I saw research article that pointed out women can multi-task better than men.
And that it was a trait of women in general.
Its a matter of dealing with kids.
So if two is the limit, what does that say about men?
Which head are they thinking with?
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Re:Women can do it better.. (Score:5, Funny)
So if two is the limit, what does that say about men?
Which head are they thinking with?
I think the answer is obvious. Our two tasks are:
1) Thinking about the woman we're are talking to
2) Thinking about the other woman over there.
Re:Women can do it better.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhere not so long ago I saw research article that pointed out women can multi-task better than men. And that it was a trait of women in general.
Its a matter of dealing with kids.
So if two is the limit, what does that say about men? Which head are they thinking with?
My apologies if I call bullshit here. A "matter of dealing with kids" is your proof? And the women who don't have kids?
It used to be that mens car insurance rates were MUCH higher than womens. Perhaps you should take a closer look at the rates today, since women think they can drive, put on makeup, and talk on the phone at the same time, and the insurance rates prove it. So does the side of my car.
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Disclaimer: Don't try this stunt without a crotch protector.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Koechlin and his colleagues had 32 subjects complete a letter-matching task while they had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The subjects saw uppercase letters on a screen and had to determine whether those letters were presented in the correct order to spell out a certain word. They were given money if they performed the task with no errors.
...
...
But then they made the task more difficult. In addition to uppercase letters, the subjects were also presented with lowercase letters, and had to switch back and forth between matching the uppercase letters to spell out, say, T-A-B-L-E-T, and lowercase letters to spell out t-a-b-l-e-t.
To make things even more complicated, the researchers introduced a third letter-matching task. Here, they saw the subject's accuracy drop considerably. It was as though, once each hemisphere was occupied with managing one task, there was nowhere for the third task to go.
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He already used one by mistake in summery. Don't give him any more, he'll only squander them.
Musicians (Score:5, Interesting)
Whilst I can accept that it is very difficult to consciously concentrate on more than two things at once, somehow some people can train their subconscious into doing so -- when sight-reading music, I experience a lovely sensation, almost as if my brain is being "split" down the middle -- if I concentrate for too long, I start to develop a headache and feel exceptionally exhausted. It is a most wonderful feeling, and nothing else in the world quite comes close (although doing some rewarding mathematics isn't far behind). I would not be surprised if it were possible to find many more examples of people concentrating on more than two things at once, "simply" through getting other bits of their brain to do the dirty work. Juggling on a unicycle while jumping over a skipping rope, anyone?
Re:Musicians (Score:4, Interesting)
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They adjust brake bias on the straights. The straight at the current Grand Prix at Shanghai is so long they'd have time to swap CDs if they only had a stereo in the car.
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I was a drummer (Score:2, Interesting)
It's really all one thing - one movement. In other words, my wrists and feet where acting synchronously to the beat. The position for each body part would be different but the timing was the same. Probably the most impressive drummer I've ever heard was Omar Hakim - drummed for Sting on "Dream of the Blue Turtles". Sometimes I wonder if that guy's hemispheres actually communicate. Which makes me wonder of those folk
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I suspect much depends on how you define 'thing'. While the organist in your example may appear to be doing many 'things', in truth they are all closely related and may not be treated by the brain as more than two 'things'.
It may also be that organists are like air traffic controllers or NASA mission controllers - from the right hand side of the bell curve.
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I used to work on the road... (Score:2)
Of course, I was not able to hold the steering with my hands, but I was using my knee (was driving on the highway).
So this is 4 tasks at a time. I never had an accident.
Re:I used to work on the road... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not having an accident doesn't make it safe.
I think "not having an accident" could be considered the 5th task ;-)
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How many times have you repeated this experiment?
doesn't apply to computer (Score:2)
Maybe 2 tasks in the foreground but its useful to have your computer checking mail, RSS feeds, defragging, etc in the background.
Pick two (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinking
Talking
Listening
Pick two.
Re:Pick two (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, just because it's difficult for some doesn't mean it's impossible. It does take training and practice, though.
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Baseball.
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A victory for the workforce (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm glad to see this. There are way too many people in my business life claiming to be good at multitasking when their only real strength is never giving anything their full attention.
It takes a certain amount of horsepower for your brain to help you get through a list of tasks, simple or not. When you focus, you get those things done faster, and usually at a higher quality.
Windows XP Starter Edition (Score:3, Funny)
A Minority Can Multitask (Score:3, Informative)
I recall an article at Arstechnica about cell phone use while driving mentioning a study that found a minority of people are actually capable of multi-tasking while the rest are "bad at it". Oh yes, here we go:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/rare-supertaskers-balance-driving-and-cellphone-use.ars
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For instance typing in some sort of online chat while doing other things - nobody expects or cares about perfect spelling (just as they shouldn't care here), so a greatly reduced level of skill gets the job done.
Driving is an incredibly bad example to choose because most driving tasks are very easy and a dangerously low level of skill for the few difficult parts is considered
Obviously... (Score:3, Funny)
I can.. (Score:2)
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I can verify it's true (Score:2)
I had an accident and the zone of my brain which is responsible for the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain (corpus callosum) was damaged during a important head injury. Now it's difficult to take notes while listening to a speaker for example because I need to concentrate on two tasks.
So both hemispheres need to work actively but what is more important is the communication between them
Re:I can verify it's true (Score:4, Interesting)
Can the "other" hemisphere act on its own? I mean, is it more like having lost half your brain, or having been split into two beings in a single body?
Yes. I theorize that in order to meld separate nodes to a single entity, the communication between them has to be at least as fast as information processing within them. That way they stay so well synchronized and coordinated that they are, for all intents and purposes, a single entity - a brain, rather than just a bunch of neurons.
This is important for AI research, since it implies that the current design of computers - fast processor, but huge cost of communication and cache misses - is as bad fit for AI as can be. Instead, you'd want lots and lots and lots of relatively weak cores with their own dedicated on-chip memory and capability of sending messages to each other.
I wonder if graphis cards and compute shaders would fit the bill? They certainly are much better at parallelization. Of course, even then you'd need lots and lots and lots of them...
Or just run the whole thing over the Internet. Let's add AI nodes to various P2P programs and see Skynet emerge :). Seriously, the burden on a single computer would be pretty low, so it should be technically doable...
Not counting what the small brain does, I guess (Score:2)
The small brain takes care of the mechanical movements of the body, such as walking, swimming, dancing, bicycling etc.
As an aside, my brain is certainly restricted to a single task, since I'm an aspie.
The type of task matters (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion, the type of task matters. And I think it has to do with what parts of your brain are used. For example, I can code/refactor and listen to a podcast just fine simultaneously. But if it's two comprehension-based tasks, like reading AND listening, I can't do them. Or lately I've even noticed I can't mentally elaborate on a thought and listen to a podcast at the same time.
The coding and listening thing seems very left brain/right brain to me.
Also, to the poster that mentioned musical multi-tasking... That's really interesting! But I think it helps that we as musicians have been training since a very young age to accept that level of multi-tasking, so the things that become muscle memory do. Fingering, breathing, sight reading, etc. Really the only thing that matters by show time is watching the conductor, the rest should be on semi auto pilot.
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I have been playing musical instruments since I was 6 years old. I have played many things from piano to trumpet to my current love, bass guitar. I find that I have little problem carrying on a conversation when I am playing a song I am familiar with, but when I am playing something new or something that requires improvisation, I cannot even carry on rudimentary conversation while playing.
I have trouble even answering yes or no questions until I reach a point where I can rest for a short period in the song
Are you sure? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure if I ... hang on, that's my phone ... I'm not sure if I ... hold on, I've got an IM. But the study ... dammit! I give up!
Cerebral Processor Limited to.... (Score:2)
Every one else is bragging... (Score:3, Funny)
So many posts bragging about being able to do a million different things at once. I don't think I can do two things at once. Once I get going I need a hardware interrupt to stop me. Usually it's the "desperately need to piss" interrupt.
RTS (Score:2)
Serious Single Tasking? (Score:2)
Have you ever tried to seriously concentrate on a single task at hand.
* A Single vim/emacs session with a code or text. No Windows, No buffers.
* Or a single webpage open and you are concentrating on that one only.
You will switch only after one is over
Compare this with the multiple buffers open with multiple tabs and multiple applications open, which you constantly switch back and forth. It may not take a genius to figure that the first one is 'more efficient'. This research substantiates that.
I personally f
Oh no ! (Score:2)
I am chewing gum while listening to music and I am typing this into Slashdot.
Oh shit ! My brain gonna explode !!!
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Yes, you are chewing gum while listening to music and posting to Slashdot.
How is this multitasking and not slacking?
Re:Oh no ! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, you are chewing gum while listening to music and posting to Slashdot.
How is this multitasking and not slacking?
Task 1: Chewing gum.
10 Chew Gum
20 Goto 10
Task 2: Listening to music
10 Hear Music
20 Shake head
30 Hymn a little bit
40 Shake leg
50 Goto 10
Task 3: Typing to Slashdot
10 Think of words to type
20 Search for the spelling of the word
30 Lift fingers
40 Use right fingers to hit the right keys
50 Eye look at screen
60 Check for typos
70 Check for grammar mistake
80 Goto 10
If that's not multitask, what is?
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Ahem, a delicate observation. Of course, it could mean you used your right (as opposed to wrong) fingers, but who knows what a slashdotter means...
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Isn't your last task really two tasks in one? I mean what're your left fingers doing eh??
Ahem, a delicate observation. Of course, it could mean you used your right (as opposed to wrong) fingers, but who knows what a slashdotter means
Mea Culpa.
Should have used the word "correct" instead of the word "right".
Sorry !
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I hate to be the one to tell you this ... but while looking at your code I think I stumbled on the reason you may feel like you're "stuck in the same old same old" these days. Every tasks ends with Goto 10. You should see a flowchart about that.
Keen observation !
Next time I'll use "goto 10" for the first task, "goto 11" for the second task, and so on.
Note to self: Need variety.
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Some of us is not so fsusy.
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60 Check for typos
70 Check for grammar mistake
Some of us is not so fsusy.
I did make mistakes even with the error trapping codes !
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Hmm, I think you should have picked something better than a Commodore VIC-20 to plan your tasks on. I don't see how those tasks could possibly be executed in a multithteaded manner! ;)
Re:Tasks? (Score:2)
Okay, the article seems a bit fuzzy but I haven't dug into the fine print of the study. But we from the computer world may think of "task" differently than the psychologists. Perhaps a better word for us is "Application", aka a whole connected series of subtasks. So I'd say your typing to slashdot is the ONLY "task" you have going. If you opened your email and worked on that, to me that would be Task/Application 2, still within "Brain Specs". So then if you were posting on a message board, per the study tha
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Wait till you see I use the "gosub" command ! Muahahahaha !
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Why does 2010 require so many empty parentheses?
I would think that in 2010 it would look more like this:
1. Slide to Unlock
2. Chew Gum App (Free Version)
3. Click!
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Oh wait, I forgot, iPhad can only multitask 2 tasks (one builtin app and one 3rd Party app). No, background notifications don't count. If interrupt handling is considered multitasking, then msdos was a multitasking beast (I wrote many TSR apps back in the day).
Full disclosure: I'm writing this on my iPhad so don't peg me as anti-apple (I have 4 more iPhads I'm paying for for wife&kids). I'm supporting Apple more than any shill so I
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That is a very serial representation. Give this a try and see if you feel more efficient.
$thought = $self->searchForTheSpellingOfTheWord(thinkOfWordsToType) //aggregate function
$self->type($thought)
$self->eyes->checkForFuckups()
I consolidated some things to logical functions.
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Hymn, or hum a little bit?
Urgent notice to self: Typo checking function crashed !
The eyeball function needs thorough debugging !
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It's multislacking!
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Listening to music and chewing gum are both things that dont really need your attention. Music comes from the heaphones weather or not you pay attention to it and chewing gum is a simple up - down motion that you make hundreds of times every day that does not really need attention either.
Posting to slashdot is the only thing that requires some amount of thinking.
Hmmm.... hmmmmmmmm....
Listening to music and chewing gum are both things that dont really need your attention.
Lemme see ...
Music comes from the heaphones weather or not you pay attention to it
But... but... I need to pay attention to the BEATS so I can shake my head and shake my leg according to the BEATS !
You don't expect my body movement different from the music beat, do you?
and chewing gum is a simple up - down motion that you make hundreds of times every day that does not really need attention either.
Dunno about you, but if I chew without paying attention I might end up chewing my tongue or my lips or ...
Painful, man !
Posting to slashdot is the only thing that requires some amount of thinking.
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Posting to slashdot is the only thing that requires some amount of thinking.
It doesn't seem to impede timothy from posting his daily iNonStory ...
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What really the results show is that we can readily divide tasking
What really the results show is that this researcher is related to Ralphie Wiggum.
... or speaking ... or even making up a story, telling it aloud and clicking "Next" to get out of doing the spelling test? I call shenanigans!
How is testing three similar tasks proof that we are limited to only two tasks? Maybe it only proves that we can't handle more than two simultaneous spelling tests. What about some hand-eye coordination thrown in there
Also, this whole premise of dividing and/or prioritizing base
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Key word is "with training"
Once trained, they are automatic and are not consciously managed. Sure, there's some higher-level stuff, like "listen to your threat indicator" and "scan your gauges" but it's not an "active" process.
Re:No. Just, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
What was the difference? Feynman was counting time by narrating the numbers in his head (using the speech system), while the other guy was picturing the numbers in his head (using the image system). So if he was using the speech system he could not speak at the same time because that system was already in use, while the other guy could not read because he was already using the image system.
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Not really - I suspect if you analyze it, driving is complicated enough to be more than one task (one task is operating the car, the other task is watching the road, but it's probably more complicated than that). That may actually be why cellphones are such a problem when driving. The medial prefrontal cortex may already be focusing on two tasks.
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However, what you're talking about is multiprocessing: working on multiple tasks simultaneously. How many a human brain can do will depend heavily on how a task is defined, and
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It's more about switching tasks than it is doing tasks at once. Imagine a normal person having to stack their working papers neatly, put them in a drawer with a file, and then close the drawer, every time they wanted to think about something not directly related to the task they're doing. For ADD people, they can actually just throw the papers on the desk or still hold them while answering the phone.
Studies show that it takes about 5-10 minutes of work to get back into the flow of things and work at peak