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New study shows itBut not an all-rounder! Bitter multitasking truth about our brain
Even with a lot of training, the human brain can't really do two tasks at the same time (symbolic image).
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That's a bitter pill to swallow!
Whether at work, around the house or when shopping – for many people, multitasking is THE solution. The motto: With enough training, you can easily do several things at the same time. But experts are now questioning exactly this behavior.
Does this attempt stop the multitasking adoption?
Even with a lot of training, the human brain can't really do two tasks at the same time. Instead, it continues to complete these tasks one after the other, as a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the Open University in Hagen and the Medical School Hamburg shows.
For the study, the test subjects worked on two tasks in parallel: They had to indicate the size of a briefly displayed circle with their right hand and at the same time say whether a tone played was high, medium or low. What was measured was how quickly they reacted and how many mistakes they made. The tests were repeated over several days.
With increasing practice, the participants became faster and made fewer mistakes. For a long time, such a training effect was considered to be an indication that the brain can process tasks in parallel with enough practice. “This phenomenon, known as Virtually Perfect Time Sharing, has long been considered an indication of true parallel processing in the brain and evidence that our brain is capable of unlimited multitasking,” said psychologist Torsten Schubert from the University of Halle. However, the new results contradict this assumption.
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This is what the new study means for everyday life
According to the researchers, the brain optimizes the order of the individual processing steps so that they interfere less with each other. “Our brain is very adept at stringing processes together.”explained Schubert. However, this optimization has limits.
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The research team was also able to prove that with the smallest changes to the tasks, the error rate increased and the test subjects took longer to solve the tasks. 25 people took part in three experiments carried out.
The findings are also relevant for everyday life: Multitasking can become a risk when driving or in jobs with many parallel tasks, said psychologist Tilo Strobach from the Medical School Hamburg. (jow/dpa)
Sources used: dpa
