Multitaskers Bad at Multitasking

A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that people who consider themselves multitaskers aren't actually very good at multitasking.

"Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. These results demonstrate that media multitasking, a rapidly growing societal trend, is associated with a distinct approach to fundamental information processing."

BBC News article