Reading

Multitasking
In the social media era, we’re all required to do several things at once. But this constant
multitasking is taking its toll. Neuroscientist Daniel J Levitin talks about our addiction to
technology and its impact.
Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re assaulted Just having the opportunity to multitask is detrimental
with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all to cognitive performance. Glenn Wilson, former visiting
posing as information. Trying to figure out what you professor of psychology at Gresham College, London,
need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. calls it info-mania. His research found that being in
At the same time, we are all doing more. Thirty years situations where you’re making a concerted effort to
ago, travel agents made our airline reservations and concentrate on a task as an email sits unread in your
salespeople helped us find what we needed in shops. inbox reduces your effective Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
Now we do most things ourselves. We’re doing a broad by almost 10 points. Wilson showed that the cognitive
spectrum of tasks while still trying to keep up with our losses from multitasking are even greater than the
lives, our families, our hobbies and our favourite TV cognitive losses from taking certain drugs.
shows, and helping us do all this is our smartphones.
Russ Poldrack, a neuroscientist at Stanford, found
They play a pivotal role – part of the 21st-century mania
that learning information while multitasking causes the
for cramming everything we do into every single spare
new information to go to the wrong part of the brain.
moment of downtime.
If students do their homework and watch TV at the
But there’s a fly in the ointment. Although we think same time, for instance, the information from their
we’re multitasking – doing several things at once – and schoolwork goes into the striatum, a region specialised
making a good job of it, this is a powerful illusion. Now for storing new procedures and skills, as opposed
new research shows that the mind can easily deal to facts and ideas. Without the distraction of TV, the
with two separate tasks at the same time, because it information goes into the hippocampus, where it’s
can channel them into the two separate parts of the organised and categorised in a variety of ways, making
front of the brain. However, when a third activity was it easier to retrieve.
introduced the mind became overloaded. Earl Miller,
To make matters worse, lots of multitasking requires
a neuroscientist at MIT and world expert on divided
decision-making: Do I answer this text message
attention, says that our brains are ‘not wired to multitask
or ignore it? How do I respond to this? It turns out
well … When people think they’re multitasking, they’re
that decision-making is also very hard on our neural
actually just switching from one task to another very
resources and that little decisions appear to take up
rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost
as much energy as big ones. One of the first things
in doing so’. So we’re not actually keeping a lot of balls
we lose is impulse control. This rapidly spirals into a
in the air like expert jugglers; we’re more like amateur
depleted state in which, after making lots of insignificant
plate spinners, frantically switching from one task to
decisions, we can end up making truly bad decisions
another, ignoring the one that’s not right in front of us
about something important.
but worried it’ll come crashing down any minute. Even
though we think we’re getting a lot done, ironically, In discussing information overload with Fortune
multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient. 500 leaders, top scientists, writers, students and
business owners, email comes up again and again
Multitasking has been found to increase the production
as a problem. It’s not a philosophical objection to
of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-
email itself, but rather the mind-numbing number of
flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate
communications that come in. When the 10-year-old
your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking.
son of my neuroscience colleague Jeff Mogil at McGill
Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback
University was asked what his father does for a living,
loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus
he responded, ‘He answers emails’. Jeff admitted after
and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To
some thought that it’s not so far from the truth. Workers
make matters worse, the area of the brain known as
in government, the arts, and industry report that the
the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its
sheer volume of email they receive is overwhelming,
attention can be easily hijacked by something new – the
taking a huge bite out of their day not only in terms
proverbial shiny objects that we use to entice infants, for
of answering them, but also prioritising which ones to
example. The irony here for those of us who are trying
answer. We feel obliged to reply our emails, but it seems
to focus amid competing activities is clear; the very
impossible to do so and get anything else done.
brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is
easily distracted.

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Questions 1–4
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in the reading
passage?
Next to questions 1–4 write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks

1 People are making greater demands on their time than ever before.
2 The smartphone has become an indispensible device for our careers.

3 People have incorrect beliefs regarding their ability to multitask well.

4 The maximum number of tasks the mind can deal with successfully at a
given time to achieve a desired outcome is three.

Questions 5–10
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5 Earl Miller uses the term ‘cognitive cost’ in the second paragraph
A to imply that multitasking may result in us missing vital information.
B to explain what actually happens in the brain during multitasking.
C to demonstrate the speed with which we work while multitasking.
D to suggest that multitasking adds to the time needed to complete a task.
6 What does the writer say about one particular hormone in relation to
multitasking?
A It causes people to lose their concentration.
B It triggers a part of the brain used for practical activities.
C It allows people to focus on several things simultaneously.
D It acts as a way of slowing down the front region of the brain.
7 According to Glenn Wilson, ‘info-mania’ means people
A place a strong emphasis on learning.
B rise to the challenge of performing well.
C find it difficult to resist the chance to multitask.
D become less competent at what they are doing.
8 What is suggested by Russ Poldrack’s research?
A There is some overlap in the brain’s zones.
B Television plays a useful role in education.
C There are benefits to doing uninterrupted study.
D Some people are better than others at recalling information.
9 What does the writer say about decision making?
A The brain has the ability to distinguish between big and small decisions.
B The brain struggles to deal with the questions involved in making a
decision.
C We often make mistakes when it comes to making decisions about
minor matters.
D We need equal amounts of brain power to make major and
unimportant decisions.
10 Which problem concerning emails does the writer mention?
A the quantity that has to be dealt with
B the difficulty in deciding when to respond
C the guilt experienced by failing to write a reply
D the boring nature of this type of communication