Mamerga, Karla G.

Multitasking: Do online multitaskers develop special skills?

The phrase multitasking refers to attending to two or more parallel tasks (as might be envisaged when
browsing products online and discussing them with friend(s) via instant messaging). Despite popular
perceptions, high frequencies of this type of behaviour appear restricted to a minority of users, even
amongst the net generation. In the strictest sense, engagement with two tasks simultaneously is
extremely difficult, and so it can be assumed that online multitasking is chiefly about switching
between two or more activities. When dealing with competing tasks (eg alternating our focus between
different windows on a screen), higher order (or top-down) processes are important in orienting and
switching our attention efficiently. Andrews and Murphy investigated the taskswitching abilities of
video gamers by presenting them with stimuli consisting of a number and letter, with a cue that
sometimes asked them to make consonant/vowel judgements and sometimes odd/even judgements.
They found video-gamers were better at task-switching, a finding also reached in a more recent study.
This performance may be aided by gamers enhanced ability to suppress distracting visual information,
while having sufficient attentional resources left over to allocate these beyond the current target. These
results contrast with a report that extensive media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference
from irrelevant environmental stimuli and irrelevant memories. However, there is a clear difference
between playing an action game in which rewards are provided for efficient attention switching, and
the practice of willingly increasing the number of distracting influences. Those who choose to
simultaneously view multiple windows and browsers, chat and enjoy portable media all at once may be
seeking distraction rather than rehearsing their attentional skills. Alternatively, it has been proposed that
heavy media multitaskers may benefit from their practice by partially attending to more than one
stream of information simultaneously, rather than rehearsing the ability assessed by Ophir et al., ie
switching between streams while ignoring the others. This might provide an argument for media
multitaskers to continue their practice in the face of the study by Ophir et al., but the suggestion
remains that media multitasking does not develop the same set of attentional skills as playing video
games.