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let’s talk about multitasking
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is you surely know kids do a lot of it
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in fact
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a recent survey indicated that kids spend seven and a half hours each day
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using electronic devices most of that time their multitasking
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question
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this poem at multitasking mean the kids today are better at multitasking
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or maybe even that doing just one thing at a time it’s kind of boring
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it is true that older people are not as good at multitasking as younger people
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are
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that doesn’t mean that today’s kids are especially good at it
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finish it doesn’t mean that they need to multitask
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for starters how do we multitask
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suppose i’m trying to writing history paper and simultaneously carry-on
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instant messaging conversation with a friend
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attention is that really shared
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switching a tension between two paths
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of course the way that i write when i am on hamming friend is different than the
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when i write history paper
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in other words when you do to tasks the rules for doing them probably different
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so when you do two things at once there’s always a cost because every time
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we switch attention you forget where you were in the other tasks and what the
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goals four
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switching between tasks is easier if you can keep a lot of stuff in mind
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simultaneously
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or
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if you’re good at redirecting your attention quickly
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young people are better at those two things that older people are
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no one sure why
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so don’t people are better multitask urs than older people
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young people didn’t get better
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just by doing a lot of multitasking
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take the kid who says he multitask saw a lot
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another kid who says she doesn’t
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now bring them into the laboratory and test their ability to multitask
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they’re both equally good at it
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most important when your brain is doing something and you had a second task
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that and was costing something on the first ask
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even as having the t_v_ on his background noise
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now studies show that homework is of lower quality when kids do it with the
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t_v_ on
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music may be an exception
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but the data there are mixed
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some studies show that listening to music is just fine
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some studies show that music without lyrics is just fine
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and some studies show that music has always been
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the general conclusion is clear
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kids are better at multitasking than adults but that’s probably always been
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true
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there’s no reason to think that there’s anything unusual or special about this
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generation
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and there’s always a cost of doing things simultaneously
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if you want to do something well it’s best to focus on one task at a time