Multitasking Illustration

Multitasking can cause cognitive overload, thus reducing the actual amount of material learned and the quality of your output.  People who practice multitasking have "greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment... are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory... and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets" (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009, p. 3 or 5). More information can be found in my previous blog post titled Media Multitasking and Memory Processes.

Attached below is an illustration that captures the downfalls to multitasking. This illustration was presented by OnlineCollege.org

Please Include Attribution to OnlineColleges.org With This Graphic

References:

Multitasking. Retrieved from www.onlinecollege.org/Multitasking

Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitasks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 106(37), 15583-15587. dpi: 10.1073/pnas.0903620106