2 Tuesday, May 29, 2007 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Multitasking impairs productivity By SARAH SALA Marois published a study in For the Daily December 2006 that located regions where signals jam in the brain when When LSA Junior Jessica Crayne a person tries to do too many things writes a paper, she also divides her at once. attention between websites like In the study, Marois shortened MySpace and Facebook and plays the time between when a subject techno music in the background. performed two tasks - responding Like many students who juggle to a sound by pressing a button and various academic and social activi- remarking verbally when an image ties at the same time, Crayne said appeared - until the subject had to focusing on manytasks at once helps do both at once. her complete assignments. Marois found that the subject's "It puts me in a fast pace and the response time to the second task lyrics are repetitive so they're not was consistently delayedby one sec- distracting," Crayne said. ond when the tasks were prompted But many experts say there are simultaneously. When subjects were definite limits to the benefits of mul- asked to do the two tasks separately titasking because of the stress it puts there was no delay in reaction time. on the brain to complete several jobs Marois said this is because per- at once. forming activities together that Rend Marois, a neuroscientist at require the same part of the brain Vanderbilt University, said that it's causes it to inefficiently toggle impossible to give equal attention to between the jobs. multiple activities at once. Automatic functions like walking "One of them is being compro- do not require much brain activity mised," he said. because they are governed by mem- ory, he said. UCLA psychology Prof. Rus- sell Poldrack said in an e-mail that learning is reduced when the brain has to manage a variety of tasks. In his July 2001 study, Poldrack discovered that multitasking com- promises the way in which the brain stores new information. He found that when a person is distracted or completing multiple tasks at once, the brain circumvents the hippo- campus, which stores new facts, and instead usesthe striatum, whichtyp- ically remembers habitual actions. Ideas stored in the hippocampus can be more readily applied to dif- ferent scenarios than facts recalled from the striatum, which the study said facilitates simple, recurring activities like memorizing a student ID number by repeatedly typing it on keyboards. Poldrack said there isn't suffi- cient data to make a claim about the effects of background stimulation like TV or music because these stim- ulations are hard to measure. Julie Lumeng, a research scien- tist at the University's Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan, said that no matter what stimuli are present a productive learning environment is one where a student is comfortable. "People have different cognitive styles. People might function better in an environment with more stimu- lation," Lumeng said. William Stixrud, a neurophysiol- ogist in Silver Spring, Md., said that layering on stimuli can be beneficial for studying as long as the sounds and images don't compete with pri- mary activities. "For some kids having music in the background kind of serves as white noise," he said. "It helps them deal with boredom and makes them less anxious." But multitasking becomes a prob- lem when students can't limit the attention they pay to activities out- side their primary academic respon- sibilities, experts say. "Academic life requiring rote memory doesn't suffer as much but classes that require thinking will be more challenging," said Jordan Grafman, chief neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Grafman pointed to many studies that have reported that multitask- ers make more errors, perform tasks slower and are more likely to lack critical thinking skills necessary to excell academically. PERFECT ANN ARBOR LOCATIONS ! BEAUTIFUL SETTINGS! LOTS OF AMENITIES! Spacious 1 & 2 Bedroom Apart- ments, with Balconies/Patios, Walk-in Closets, Free Storage, On-Site Laundry, Swimming Pool, Outdoor Recreation areas & much more! PET FRIENDLY! TRAVER KNOLL APTS 1984 Traver Rd (N. Campus-Near U/M Hospital) SHOREVIEW APTS 420 Kellogg (N. 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