Taskloading in science

[iztok]

Why We Can't Do 3 Things at Once | LiveScience

"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."

 

[tomboyy]

:chuckle:betcha can't read a paragraph and write one at the same time

 

[redacted]

:chuckle:betcha can't read a paragraph and write one at the same time

betcha can't read a paragraph and wrote one at the same time.

 

[TSandM]

Man, as an ER doc, I'm quite sure I juggle more than two things at the same time on a regular basis. Maybe my MFC divides into thirds or fourths?

 

[themagni]

Man, as an ER doc, I'm quite sure I juggle more than two things at the same time on a regular basis. Maybe my MFC divides into thirds or fourths?

If I understand the studies correctly, you can only process 1 or 2 tasks at once -- the ones you're not actively paying attention to go onto the back burner, at least temporarily. When you want to "multi-task", you pull up what you remember about the task and push one of the existing "front" tasks back into memory.

 

[knotical]

TSandM brings up a good point.
The study was presumably conducted with a random collection of subjects. It would be constructive to re-run the study with subjects who had been "trained" by experience in a multitask environment.
The human brain is amazingly adaptable, and I wouldn't be surprised if a trained mind did well on three or more simultaneous tasks.

 

[watboy]

To use a computer analogy, there's a difference between multi tasking and multi threading. Multi tasking to me, is having stack of things to accomplish, prioritizing the work load, keeping track of the greater list, and being able to re-evaluate and re-prioritize as necessary, while working on one or two items at a time. The key word in TSandM's post is "juggle".

Multi threading is being able to simultaneously process multiple items at once. And for this, two seems like a reasonable number of how many things you can actively process at once.