Research on Adolescent Multitasking

From the Marshall Memo #437

In this Education Week article, Sarah Sparks reports on research indicating that many 13-18 year-olds, afraid they’ll miss out on something important, use as many as six types of technology simultaneously. They pay “continuous partial attention” to lots of stuff and have difficulty concentrating deeply on anything, says Larry Rosen of California State University/ Dominguez Hills, author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 

Rosen and others shared insights on how the human brain copes with multitasking at a recent Web-Connected Minds Conference. “Simply put, the brain can’t be in two places at once,” reports Sparks, citing research by Steven Yantis of Johns Hopkins University. “Not only can people not process two tasks simultaneously, but it takes longer to multitask than it would to do the individual tasks one after the other… It’s fine to walk and chew gum at the same time, but when a person tries to do two things at the same time that each require a choice, there’s a brief ‘bottleneck’ in the prefrontal cortex – the decision-making part of the brain – that delays the second task. In most situations, that delay is only milliseconds long. Yet the newer the task, the more dynamic the environment, and the more intense the distraction, the longer it will take the brain to react. In the case of an adolescent driver… texting could slow reaction time by a full second, which at high speed is ‘halfway into the trunk of the car in front of you.’” 

Whether they’re in classrooms or studying at home, multitasking students miss important information or don’t fully take it in, are more easily distracted, and perform worse on memory and attention tests than those who do one thing at a time. “There appears to be an intrinsic, structural aspect of brain function that prevents perfect task-sharing,” says Yantis. If a student is reading a textbook chapter and is interrupted by a text message, getting back into the chapter takes longer than one would imagine. “Part of this switch time is remembering what you were reading, getting your head back into the task of reading, not just moving your eyes,” he says. 

These delays are even more pronounced with students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “It’s ironic, but hyperactive children are slow,” says Martha Denckla of Johns Hopkins. “Multiple-task interference is greater in children with ADHD; it costs them more. As they have to respond, evaluate, and move along, they have a harder time doing it.” 

But aren’t young people better at multitasking than adults? Their working memory is slightly more efficient, says psychologist Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia/ Charlottesville, and they’re more adept at using technology. But, he says, “There’s not much reason to think they are better at multitasking than previous generations.” And there’s the judgment that comes with maturity – knowing when to stop multitasking and pay attention. Experienced adult drivers take their eyes off their cell phone as they approach a traffic light and have fewer accidents and near misses than teen drivers, who find it more difficult to look up from a text message. “Working memory depends strongly on how well you can control selective attention and ignore distractions,” says Yantis. “High-value distraction significantly slows performance.” 

Some teens are better than others at restraining themselves from multitasking when it’s not appropriate. Larry Rosen did an experiment in which honors-level college students were asked to watch a video lecture on which they knew they would be tested. Researchers then texted some of the students on unrelated topics and asked for “prompt” responses. Those who were interrupted by texts scored ten percentage points worse on the test – a full letter grade – than those who received no texts. And of those who were texted, prompt responders did significantly worse on the test than those who held off responding for five or more minutes. This parallels the finding of the classic “marshmallow” experiment, in which young children who had the self-control to restrain themselves from eating a treat for 15 minutes were found to do better academically and socially in subsequent years. 

Is the answer to take away adolescents’ cell phones and computers? Absolutely not, say Rosen and author Cathy Davidson. Multitasking is an important skill for adult life. What educators and parents need to do is help young people develop a metacognitive sense to know when multitasking is unhelpful and unsafe – and the self-control to pull themselves away from their beloved cell phones and computers when it’s time to focus on one thing.

“New Research on Multitasking Points to Role of Self-Control” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, May 16, 2012 (Vol. 31, #31, p. 1, 13), http://bit.ly/J0t2WD