Full transcript
0:00With life getting more demanding and hectic all the time
0:03it seems there's only one way to cope - multitasking!
0:06Gurus and life hackers make a living telling us how to get better at it.
0:10But can we actually multitask?
0:12The term was first used in the '60s, to describe computer performance.
0:16The human brain, though, is not a computer
0:18and human attention is a very limited resource.
0:21Some psychologists model visual attention as being like a spotlight.
0:24It can only be shone in one direction at any one time.
0:28Our primary focus - what we're paying most attention to -
0:31is like the brightly lit area in the centre of the beam.
0:35It can also be understood as being like a zoom lens -
0:37we can choose to narrow our focus to concentrate in detail,
0:41or widen it, to be aware of more things simultaneously.
0:44But we can't be zoomed in and out at the same time.
0:48Even though we're constantly receiving a huge amount
0:51of information from our senses, it's only possible for a small amount
0:55to make it through to conscious awareness.
0:57Watch the next section very carefully,
1:00and pay particular attention to how many balls bounce in the circle.
1:09How many can you count? Seven, right?
1:13But did you also notice that little dinosaur?
1:17What about the changing shape of the circle?
1:20Or the smiley face on one of the balls?
1:23This shows just how powerful focused attention is.
1:26Being able to filter out irrelevant detail is an amazingly useful tool,
1:30but it means we can miss things that are right under our noses -
1:33an effect known as inattention blindness.
1:36You can see this very clearly in the famous Invisible Gorilla experiment.
1:41When asked to concentrate exclusively
1:43on how often basketball players in white pass the ball,
1:46most people completely miss the gorilla
1:48walking across the screen and beating his chest.
1:51We just don't have the capacity to process everything at once.
1:55This is a particular problem when we try to multitask.
1:58We can switch attention from one task to another and back again.
2:02But when attention is overloaded, we miss things,
2:05and the result is nearly always that we perform tasks less well
2:08than we would doing them one at a time.
2:11It's only truly possible to do two things at once if they require
2:14different sets of cognitive resources.
2:16For example, it's totally possible to read a book and listen to music
2:20at the same time.
2:22Which would suggest that driving while talking on the phone
2:24is not a problem, as long as it's a hands-free phone.
2:28It's not that simple though -
2:30research has shown that while talking on the phone
2:32we have a tendency to create mental images,
2:35and this uses the same visual resources needed for driving.
2:39And if visual resources become too stretched,
2:41it's perfectly possible for a driver to look directly at a hazard
2:44but, just like with that little dinosaur, fail to see it.
2:48Not everything will make it through to conscious awareness.
2:52So multitasking makes us at best, inefficient,
2:55and at worst, downright dangerous.
2:57If you're feeling like you should be doing 17 things at once, remember,
3:01that's just not the way your brain is wired.
3:07Thanks for watching.
3:08Don't forget to subscribe and click the bell to receive notifications for new videos.
3:12See you again soon!