[Air-l] multitasking

[Nancy Baym]

>As this is the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS, I wonder if anyone has
>done any Research on multitasking -- to address the interesting
>conjectures that a bunch of people have.


I don't have the citation, and it's not internet research, but the 
pscyhologist  Barbara Rogoff 
(http://psych.ucsc.edu/faculty/brogoff/index.php?Home) has done some 
cross cultural work between Utah, USA and South America and shown 
that the South American mothers are better able to multitask than the 
American mothers. What she did was to bring a toy for the child to 
play with while she interviewed the mother that was too difficult for 
the child to figure out alone. The American mothers had to alternate 
between attending to the interview and the child, while the South 
American mothers (and I apologize for not remembering the country in 
which she was working) could do both simulatneously.

Nancy