The Myth of Multitasking

quarky said:
Not sure if this is on topic, but has anyone felt itch and pain simultaneously? The two sensations apparently compete for neural paths, and i can't recall ever having both at the same time. It might even be possible to trade pain for itchiness.
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So you don't think you can have a headache and an itch at the same time?

I think you underestimate the capacity of one's brain to walk and chew gum at the same time. I remember being told the myth that we couldn't dream in color. That's probably why I still recall a certain dream from my childhood that had the most vivid colors.

Ketyk got it right when he noted:
Doesn't "multi-tasking" depend on the tasks?

I can drive and listen to the radio.
I can drive and eat a Whopper.
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When you say compete for neural paths, are you imagining one solid spinal nerve plugged into the brain? Are you imagining a gate in the brain that only lets one nerve line in at a time?

Best to turn to a source of scientific information and not word of mouth for these questions:
In a related perceptual phenomenon, flash suppression, the percept associated with an image projected into one eye is suppressed by flashing another image into the other eye while the original image remains. ... The majority of cells in the inferior temporal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus of monkeys trained to report their percept during flash suppression follow the animal's percept: when the cell's preferred stimulus is perceived, the cell responds. If the picture is still present on the retina but is perceptually suppressed, the cell falls silent, even though primary visual cortex neurons fire.[17][18] Single-neuron recordings in the medial temporal lobe of epilepsy patients during flash suppression likewise demonstrate abolishment of response when the preferred stimulus is present but perceptually masked.[19]
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Sounds like the brain chooses to respond to one vision or the other until you also discover:
Blindsight is defined as the ability of people who are cortically blind due to lesions in their striate cortex, also known as primary visual cortex or V1, to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see[1]. The majority of studies on blindsight are conducted on patients who are blind on only one side of their visual field. Following the destruction of the striate cortex, patients are asked to detect, localize, and discriminate amongst visual stimuli that are presented to their blindside often in a forced-response or guessing situation, even though they are not able to actually see the stimulus. Research shows a surprising amount of accuracy in the guesses of blind patients. This ability to guess, at levels significantly above chance, aspects of a visual stimulus, such as location, or type of movement without any conscious awareness of any stimuli is known as Type 1 blindsight. Type 2 blindsight occurs when patients claim to have a feeling that there has been a change within their blind area, for example, movement, but that it was not a visual percept[3][citation needed]. This phenomenon challenges what we once believed to be true, that perceptions must enter consciousness to affect our behavior. Blindsight proves that our behavior can be guided by sensory information of which we are completely unaware. (Carlson, 2010) It may be thought of as a converse of the form of anosognosia known as Anton–Babinski syndrome, in which there is full cortical blindness along with the confabulation of visual experience.
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The question becomes, define multi-tasking. Are you talking about actually doing more than one task at a time, say driving and eating, playing a guitar and singing, etc? Or are you talking about having two things receiving conscious attention at the exact same moment?


Then there's the issue how just how much information can a brain remain aware of simultaneously? Look at your computer screen. How many neurons does it take to bring that image into your consciousness center? Include the surrounding room image, the sounds, the smells, your fingers touching the keyboard and your brain also sending commands back and receiving feedback from the movement all the while you may be thinking about being late for work if you don't hurry up and recognizing the faces of your kids who are in the room.

I rest my case. ;)
 
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quarky said:
Not sure if this is on topic, but has anyone felt itch and pain simultaneously? The two sensations apparently compete for neural paths, and i can't recall ever having both at the same time. It might even be possible to trade pain for itchiness.
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Oh yeah... for years.
The itch becomes painful, but a good painful...until the next day.
 
JJM 777 said:
I can, and often will, text while driving. Or talk to the phone. Or read a map, either physical or online via the web browser of my phone. Or find the address or opening hours of a shop on the phone web browser. I am conscious of the increased risk, and being conscious about it is what makes it safe, actually it makes me more alert than normally, more conscious about the necessity of being alert.
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Please stay away from Canada.
 
Belz... said:
I'Ve often said that you can only do 2 tasks at once if you do each at 50% efficiency. Best focus on what you're doing.
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When downloading a couple of 2GB image files from a keyfob camera, which can take 10 minutes, I can do the washing, transcribe the data from the bicycle computer, and go on-line to the forum.:rolleyes:
 
JJM 777 said:
I can, and often will, text while driving. Or talk to the phone. Or read a map, either physical or online via the web browser of my phone. Or find the address or opening hours of a shop on the phone web browser. I am conscious of the increased risk, and being conscious about it is what makes it safe, actually it makes me more alert than normally, more conscious about the necessity of being alert.
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And I bet you also consider yourself to be a good driver...
 
Industrial strength multitasking: playing the piano from written music. You have 2-3
lines of music, each with different time values, dynamics. You interpret, play 2-10 notes at one time, may sustain some but not all. The amount of information processed is overwhelming.
 
I Ratant said:
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When downloading a couple of 2GB image files from a keyfob camera, which can take 10 minutes, I can do the washing, transcribe the data from the bicycle computer, and go on-line to the forum.:rolleyes:
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I can't tell if you're joking or not, but you're obviously only doing one thing yourself.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
So you don't think you can have a headache and an itch at the same time?

I think you underestimate the capacity of one's brain to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Then there's the issue how just how much information can a brain remain aware of simultaneously? Look at your computer screen. How many neurons does it take to bring that image into your consciousness center? Include the surrounding room image, the sounds, the smells, your fingers touching the keyboard and your brain also sending commands back and receiving feedback from the movement all the while you may be thinking about being late for work if you don't hurry up and recognizing the faces of your kids who are in the room.

I rest my case. ;)
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The brain unquestionably processes multiple streams of information simultaneously. I do question however whether our awareness can be focused on more than one thought or perception at truly the same instant.
What most people think of as multi-tasking (as already mentioned by others) is in fact serial processing of multiple tasks. It just depends upon the time frame you're considering. At the end of the day you've completed multiple tasks over an 8 hour period, but minute to minute you must focus on one at a time. Juggling as described above is a more apt term than multitasking, it seem to me.

That's why reading or texting while driving is idiotic. It only takes a seconds distraction and you will have annihilated another sentient creature's existence.
 
MuDPhuD said:
That's why reading or texting while driving is idiotic. It only takes a seconds distraction and you will have annihilated another sentient creature's existence.
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I'm not sure where she got the information, but our Safety Manager sent a document at one point that claimed it takes several seconds to readjust to the road after looking away. I want to say it was around 8s, but that seems too long to me now. In any case, adding that time to the average amount of time to send/read a text (~4.5s), a driver is really risking his or her own safety, as well as that of others, by texting while driving.
 
Hoppy said:
Industrial strength multitasking: playing the piano from written music. You have 2-3
lines of music, each with different time values, dynamics. You interpret, play 2-10 notes at one time, may sustain some but not all. The amount of information processed is overwhelming.
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You can only really do this after considerable practice. I'm sure you've noticed that as you practice a piece over and over, parts of the activity become automatic, allowing your awareness to focus on other previously neglected aspects, gradually improving your performance until finally you can actively switch focus from one feature to another while you play. You become able to actively modify an almost entirely automatic activity as if "you" are not the performer at all.
Know what I mean?
 
I Ratant said:
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When downloading a couple of 2GB image files from a keyfob camera, which can take 10 minutes, I can do the washing, transcribe the data from the bicycle computer, and go on-line to the forum.:rolleyes:
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But you are not downloading the photos. You delegated that task to your computer.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I challenge any of you to watch a charge nurse on a busy hospital unit and tell me she/he isn't multitasking.
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She's probably well-experienced in most of the tasks. If she's not she may very well make mistakes or forget something.

Given the nature of the job it could very well cost lives. That multitasking complex duties is essentially impossible (an interrupted programmer takes 20 minutes to sink back down into a deep task) is an important result to consider.
 
Hoppy said:
Industrial strength multitasking: playing the piano from written music. You have 2-3
lines of music, each with different time values, dynamics. You interpret, play 2-10 notes at one time, may sustain some but not all. The amount of information processed is overwhelming.
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Yeah, but can you play the kazoo while doing that?
 
I Ratant said:
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And how'd you miss I wasn't in the washing machine beating on the clothes?
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You're not describing multitasking then. You have to performing the actions simultaneously. You're equivocating in so far as "doing the laundry" includes a lot of time where you as an individual are not interacting at all with the laundry, time in which you can complete other tasks but are not multitasking yourself.
 
Multi-tasking for me and for most people I have observed simply means doing poor work very quickly. Then slowly going back and fixing the errors later, taking more time overall than carefully completing each task.

You think you are doing a vast amount of productive work, but everything turns out only half-vast.
 
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It depends on the tasks. Some are best solved by assigning priorities and tackling them in order, for example.
And I distrust one size fits all solutions that don't appear to have much experimental evidence.
 
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