Came across this article in the NYT Bits Blog – Multitasking Takes Toll on Memory ; states quite simply that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published research which shows that multitasking takes a significant toll on the working memory of older individuals. There has been other research suggesting that this ‘divided attention’ will hurt learning and cognitive performance. Some interesting insights to be found in the article, it’s worth a read. Multitasking or excessive task switching may not be the best for our memory skills. We’d written about this on our blog sometime ago, including a small experiment here and referencing some other articles here . “You say, I’ve got to go to the market to get eggs, but then you get home and you’ve got 20 other things and you forgot the eggs,” Hasn’t this happened to every one of us? Perhaps the age of digital technology will only reduce our attention spans and make it worse.
