Are women better than men at multitasking?

In a research published in 2013 

Men were slower and less organised than women when switching rapidly between tasks in tests by UK psychologists.

Both sexes struggled to cope with juggling priorities, but men suffered more on average, according to the paper in the journal BMC Psychology.

Men and women were equal when tasks were tackled one at a time. But when the tasks were mixed up there was a clear difference.

Both women and men slowed down, and made more mistakes, as the switching became more rapid.

But the men were significantly slower - taking 77% longer to respond, whereas women took 69% longer.

But a new study, published  in PLOS One, shows women are actually no better at multitasking than men.

The study tested whether women were better at switching between tasks and juggling multiple tasks at the same time. The results showed women's brains are no more efficient at either of these activities than men's.

No one is good at multitasking

Multitasking is the act of performing several independent tasks within a short time. It requires rapidly and frequently switching attention from one task to another, increasing the cognitive demand, compared to completing single tasks in sequence.

This study builds on an existing body of research showing human brains cannot manage multiple activities at once. Particularly when two tasks are similar, they compete to use the same part of the brain, which makes multitasking very difficult.

But human brains are good at switching between activities quickly, which makes people feel like they're multitasking. The brain, however, is working on one project at a time.

In this new study, German researchers compared the abilities of 48 men and 48 women in how well they identified letters and numbers. In some experiments, participants were required to pay attention to two tasks at once (called concurrent multitasking), while in others they needed to switch attention between tasks (called sequential multitasking).

The researchers measured reaction time and accuracy for the multitasking experiments against a control condition (performing one task only).

They found multitasking substantially affected the speed and accuracy of completing the tasks for both men and women. There was no difference between the groups.

Reference

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