Study: Humans can think about four things at once
Posted January 29 2008 2:53 pm by kobewan
Tags: multitasking, study
According to a study that was recently published in the journal Psychological Science, the human brain has a hardwired limit to the number of things it can concentrate on at once. According to the findings of the team of researchers, led by psychology professors Edward Awh and Edward Vogel at the University of Oregon , that limit is four for most individuals.
Of course, one the operative words in the previous sentence is “most”. The study states: “People with high IQs can think about more things at once.” The study also found that the limit is affected by the complexity of the tasks being accomplished.
Many people are pointing to this study as proof that people who multitask are not doing a good job on any of their tasks. However, I have to ask: how many people are trying to accomplish more than four tasks at a time? To me, this study seems like evidence to support the claim of multitaskers, that multitasking can make you more efficient - to a point.
Humans can only think of four things at once [InformationWeek]