[Air-l] multitasking

[David Smahel]

Richard,

> operationalize "multi-tasking" as moving between multiple tasks in an
effort
> to complete both, rather than completing them sequentially - doing one
until
> finished, then the other etc.
I don't think that this definition is good for our Internet multitasking
studies. I still think that we need some time framing. It's not
multitasking in my opinion when I'm doing "task 1" 2 hours and "task 2"
another 2 hours and than I continue in "task 1". I think we need to
define "computer multitasking" better. We also need some multitasking
categorisation, btw do you know some? I think there are several ways how
to multitask and how it is used.

> while using video screen-capture tutorials and he defined
multi-tasking as degree of switching among windows
> (not necessarily monitors) and found that multi-tasking actually
helped performance.
"degree of switching among windows" is better definition for our
purposes in my opinion. But it's also only one but probably most common
way how to multitask. It's still possible that several windows are parts
of one task. (I work on an article and I opened SPSS, Word and some
literature, I percieve this as one task or not?) 

> First there is definitely a literature in experimental psychology on
> multi-tasking, which pretty strong suggests it's bad - the sum of
> performance on tasks performed in sequence is better than performance
on the
> tasks performed simultaneously However, like much of basic research in
psychology,
> it's strong in controls, but not real strong in ecological validity. 
You are absolutely right. These experimental psychology results don't
say us much about the "real multitasking" on computers in my opinion.
First of all, we are not able to concetrate absolutely all the time
while working (8 and more hours daily). My main idea and hypothesis is
that multitasking is the way how to RELAX. I'm not able to work and
think 100% of the time, so I do "jumps" to other things: e.g. I'm
working on an article but I interrupt the work several times: e.g. I
write e-mails to students/friends but what is important, while writing
the e-mail I relax some from more complicated work and perhaps my brain
is also working "on background" on the article (??? many question
marks). I know a lot of friends who work as programmers who multitask
(relax) with real computer games - not many people are able to write
programmes so many hours per day without rest, so they just use some
type of "short" games for this purpose (Interent chess, icq games, but
also reading discussion lists etc). 

What do you think about this function of the multitasking?

Regards,

David