The internet may be the most comprehensive source of information ever created but it’s also the biggest distraction. Set out to find an answer on the web and it’s all too easy to find yourself flitting between multiple tabs, wondering how you ended up on a page so seemingly irrelevant to the topic you started on.
has shown that we have a very limited capacity to perform two or more tasks at the same time and brainpower suffers when we try. But my new study suggests that some people are better at multitasking online than others.
Being able to switch between multiple web pages and successfully find what you want all comes down to how good your working memory is.
Working memory is the for the storage and processing of information, decision making, and planning. It is responsible for the attention, quality, and quantity of information that is stored and processed in both the .
Many psychologists describe working memory as the a specific amount of information while intervening with other information or tasks.
Previous studies have suggested that working memory plays an important role in multitasking. For example, showed interruptions reduced people’s ability to multitask. This suggests our working memory can only hold a limited amount of information at any one time, limiting our capacity to think about multiple things at once.
focuses on, among other things, how people’s different levels of working memory influence their multitasking behaviour while using the web. I assessed the working memory of 30 students using an that asked them to remember a series of written characters while solving maths questions. I then asked them to use the web to research four topics of their choice, two they had prior knowledge of and two they didn’t.
This was particularly important as that having prior knowledge of a subject means you can study it with less effort from your working memory.
I found that participants with high working memory switched between their information topics and web search results more often than those with low working memory. This seemed to enable them to test and retest different strategies for finding the answers they wanted. This means that they were able to divert more of their attention between different tasks.
The people with high working memory also reported that they were able to coordinate existing and new knowledge, multiple topics and deal with interruptions more easily. And they had a better grasp of trying different strategies, such as using different search engines, formulating search queries, evaluating webpages and saving results.
What’s more, those with low working memory capacity thought the previously unfamiliar topics they were researching became more complex as they went on.
