Talk:Human multitasking

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 April 2020 and 20 July 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Makaylahatt11.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Nhuang97.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Research on human multitasking
Hello, I think part of the last sentence of the paragraph is missing... Any idea when it disappeared and why it never reappeared? Xionbox (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)i know. someone ate it!

Seriousness/tone
I'd like for someone to revise the start of this article, at the very least. It refers to "Context switching", and that's a computer-related article, and there's no science saying that humans context switch at all. It's just plain silly.--80.216.226.83 (talk) 21:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Women and multitasking
I think it is highly probable the reason that women are thought to be better multitaskers (if nobody minds this word?), probably lays in their seeming ability to perform multiple housekeeping chores at the same time. Actually, this would just be an example of what is mentioned in the article on Computer multitasking, that "When context switches occur frequently enough the illusion of parallelism is achieved". In other words, by switching frequently between the different chores she is performing, the (usually) inattentive husband would ascribe magic multitasking talents to his beloved wife.Debresser (talk) 14:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Microprocessors can't literally perform several tasks simultaneously
Im not sure this statement is entirely true or it needs context (cpus contain many processing units/pipelines/logic units all working in parallel, hyper threading is an example of 1 processor and 1 core sharing its units across 2 tasks, there are more possible contradictions). The paragraph discussing computers and multi tasking seems to need clarifying? 92.4.87.146 (talk) 20:04, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The famous Australian chef James Tarkasis, who? Who is this guy, I dont find much on google or anything on wikipedia. Is his multitasking really that good that you get the impression of by reading the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.250.73.78 (talk) 21:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Biased
The article is biased in favor of the negative aspects of multi-tasking n does not even remotely consider its positive aspects such as the ability of sustained prolonged performance of a task.. for example a person who multi-tasks between reading and listening to music in fact is able to study much longer than he would no normally. Even though it reduces efficiency to an extend ,the positive consequences cannot be ignored.Consider the possibility that the content being read does not require the readers utmost attention, here multi-tasking can only be benificial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.206.53.32 (talk) 15:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

--Your poor spelling and punctuation only go to show you cant type and be a dick at the same time


 * I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that wasn't the OP who posted that last part. Please tone it down, and please comment on user's content, not their grammar. Also, they pose a perfectly valid point; you however, do not. I'm not in much of an authority position to say it, but seriously, please, tone it down. The internet is scummy enough as it is without that kind of stuff. Steven (talk) 18:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

--- Definitely agree that this page reeks of bias. Not only is there no positive merits brought up, the possibility of there being pros isn't even excepted.

--- This page is clearly bias it only give one point of view, it absurd to think that there is only negative research associate with human multitasking. Even deadly virus can have small positive research associated to them. The human mind multitask all the time, whether it listening to something and writing what is being said or moving you're leg at the same time. There is also no clear definition of what this article qualifies as a task. There should at least be a warning sign that this article is bias. ThinkFastOrDie (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey, that's not cool.
In reference to the second paragraph of "Popular Commentary on Practical Multitasking"

Okay, people are getting a little crazy with the bias up in here. I wouldn't mind, but you can't just invalidate a scientific experiment by calling it "less 'ecologically valid.'" There are a number of things wrong with this:
 * 1) Ecologically valid is not cited as a quote from anywhere, take it out of the quotes.
 * 2) Don't cite Wikipedia articles, link to them instead.
 * 3) It's quite clear that there's some bias in the last sentence of the paragraph, but it was so poorly written that I can't tell what it is. Pity.
 * 4) Not relevant, but suggesting that there is are differences between the genders in a specific area without any kind of formal proof is sexism. Keep that out of here, pweeeaasse? Thanks.

Booo sexism. Me no likey. Regardless of the direction of it. Sexism is sexism is sexism is bad, whether men or women do it.

For now, until one side or the other has a statistically significant and formal research document to cite, can we just agree that no one really knows for sure? People actually use these pages for information, it's not the place for debate. Go get a Ph. D. in neuroscience or psychology, and debate in a proper academic forum, or at least keep it to these informal discussion pages.

I'll try to forward this to someone who actually cares...

Steven (talk) 18:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Hey, that's not cool 2.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.197.88.55 (talk) 21:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) The section is called "Popular Commentary on Practical Multitasking" - it is not called 'formal proof'. There can be no 'formal proof' - this phrase belongs to the realm of mathematics and formal logic - not science. Nothing is 'proven' in science
 * 2) Actually both studies in this section show an advantage for females - go to the website and see for youself - it clearly shows that the study is underpowered - so there is a female advantage but too few men and women tested to make it significant
 * 3) 'Not ecologically valid' means that the study involves activities that have no real analogue in real life e.g. just listening to bleeps etc This does not invalidate the experiment - but limits its application
 * 4) You have a sexist understanding of what sexism means - you may not appreciate or even understand the evidence, but it exists nontheless - in fact, both studies reveal a female advantage. To call someone 'sexist' because they do not have 'formal proof' is nonsense - there is no formal proof that 'God exists' - does that imply that all believers are anti-atheist or that all non-believers are sacrileigious...of course not!
 * 5) and it is not gender - the word is sex - gender is a psychological term - sex is a biological term - the differences are between the sexes and not between genders
 * 6) by the way, ignorance and rudeness are especially not cool - getting an education would be cool

Re deletion of "Another (unpublished) study by Brandy R. Criss found that "men and women are both equally productive in the area of multitasking" only a few years earlier. Some claim, however, that given the small sample size in the study the results are inconclusive."

The Criss study is a simple study of divivded attention (rather than multitasking) - individuals are asked to detect hearing the word 'You' as it appears in 15 seconds of a song while also reading —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.197.88.43 (talk) 07:00, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Removal of Poorly Cited Material
I went through and nipped out sentences which had gone a long time without a citation and I also followed through to some of the citations and found a bit which was unfounded speculative expansion not properly supported by the citation and one part which literally was a direct quote from a Time article which was simply speculation upon the part of the original author and not in any way scientific or well-founded (or so it seemed to me, upon reading the article). Zanotam (talk) 03:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Tone and neutrality issues
This article has a horrifically unencyclopaedic tone. As mentioned before, it sounds biased; its main goal is trying to convince the reader that the very concept of Human Multitasking is a real, notable term/phenomenon. Like many articles based on Clifford Nass and his "research", this one needs a lot of revision.

I would vote to remove it altogether as it sounds like a made-up, sensationalist term with very little significant research to back it up except for Nass's own and that of his colleagues who jumped on the same bandwagon. But, it'd be better if a neutral party can verify and prove me wrong (i.e. specify the exact results of the research which are so notable to merit a Wikipedia article), that'd be much appreciated! The people writing these Nass articles are kind of sensitive about the notability flags that I put on them. 67.164.92.202 (talk) 07:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

legal limit
I have a thing about it mentioning the legal limit as if it applies everywhere, the fact that 0.08 isn't observed in all countries as the BAC limit for drivers, at least in Australia it is 0.05 and i can guess that a lot of states in the US have a different BAC, yeah sure the this is a US website, but it caters for all countries. so at least say "the 0.08% US legal limit" instead of "the 0.08 legal limit"219.90.154.84 (talk) 07:47, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The "brain multitasking regions" might actually be the "brain confusion management regions" (but because they are active for many tasks, mention them)
In the brain paragraph, add a subparagraph about the specifically proposed multitasking regions (which is a mistake; because in proper multitasking the activity is pretty normal; some "brain multitasking regions" might be MORE [not only then] active when the brain processes incomprehensible data; so here it is wrong to be mentioned; the correct title would have been "brain's ways to deal with confused input"; but because we still don't know everything about the brain; mention it and add the extra remark.

Wiki Education assignment: Human Cognition SP23
— Assignment last updated by Jellycat98 (talk) 04:56, 8 April 2023 (UTC)