Multitasking as a Personal Choice of the Mode of Activity in Russian Children and Adolescents: Its Relationship to Experimental Multitasking and its Effectiveness

BACKGROUND: A person’s ability to solve several tasks simultaneously, or within a limited amount of time, — i.e., multitasking — is becoming more and more highly valued in society, despite experimental data in cognitive science about the low effectiveness of such activity. But, in the modern world, the term multitasking has become increasingly used in another sense — that is, a personal choice to perform several tasks simultaneously even if a person could do them consecutively. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to reveal the relationship between a personal preference for multitasking, its subjective effectiveness in children and adolescents, and their tendency for and efficacy of multitasking under experimental conditions. DESIGN: One hundred and fifty-seven (157) schoolchildren of different ages participated in the study, which called for responding to four windows on a screen, including texts (SMS) and video images, and reporting on their subjective multitasking and its efficacy. RESULTS: The majority of children and adolescents said (the older they were, the more likely) that sometimes, or often, they combine several tasks, and argued that their performance was effective. CONCLUSION: The subjective perspective on multitasking and its effectiveness was more likely to be related to multitasking by carrying out several tasks simultaneously, than switching between tasks, and was not related to actual effectiveness when undertaking a variety of activities within a limited time period. In the case of distractions (for instance, incoming messages while undertaking tasks), they might be related to a decrease in effectiveness.