Media multitasking has become more popular with the proliferation of multi function devices and the belief that multitasking can increase productivity. The trend is especially true among the youth today. On the other hand, scientific researches in different areas have shown that human brain cannot process information simultaneously and constantly switching between tasks may reduce performance. This study is the first attempt to examine task performance under multitasking conditions through a controlled experiment.
In this study, subjects were asked to work with one or two partners through online communication tools like Instant Messaging (IM) and Skype. The results show that there is deterioration on performance from single task to multitask. Although actors in multitask conditions think they performed well, their partners give a lower rating on actors performance. Therefore, when people are multitasking, they may not perform as well as when they only focused on one thing.
Other than self and others perceived performance, we also looked at number of questions answered as an indicator of actors performance. There is a significant difference between single task and multitask on number of questions answered during the experiment. This indicated that when doing more than one things at the same time, people slowed down with their work and therefore there is no improvement productivity as commonly assumed.
This study is a first attempt to study the multitasking behavior under an environment that simulated the real life online communication experience. Although numerous survey studies have provided evidence about the prevalence of media multitasking among both youth and other generations, this study provide more insights about the discrepancy between self and others perception and experience during multitasking process. Since we used an experiment design in this study, the results cannot be applicable to the general population. However, future study may use our findings to further investigate the multitasking communication process on a broader basis.