[Air-l] multitasking

[Charlie Balch]

It is fascinating how we live in a world that is very different from that of
even a few decades ago. The changes to our world expose different abilities.

I suggest a paradigm that we all have certain amount of "attention ability"
and that we also have differing attention "divide abilities." A person with
a high level of attention ability and a high level divide ability could
effectively multitask. A more moderate attention ability with a combined
moderate level of attention divide ability might be described as attention
deficient disorder. 

A person with high attention ability but low attention divide ability would
be able to do very well on some tasks. For instance, many persons who create
computer code have been found to be border-line autistic. Autistics are very
good at focusing on one thing such as the creation of computer code.

Like computer programming, new technologies are exposing talents and
abilities that may not have been useful in earlier times. I find this very
Darwinian.

Charlie
LSU Doctoral Candidate (hopefully done soon)
AWC Professor of CIS

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Sam Tilden
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 4:12 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] multitasking

Technically this is incorrect! They are better able to rapidly change the
focus of attention. The article is the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
   
  Sam

Nancy Baym <nbaym at ku.edu> wrote:
  >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
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