Simultaneous thought processes.

[Raider5678]

Hello everyone,

I was recently talking with someone and when they weren't fully focused I asked what was wrong, and they replied they were thinking about what they were going to do after school. Now this surprised me, because frankly I don't understand how it's so hard to talk and think about what you're going to be doing later at the same time. This happens fairly often, and while I didn't realize it before it occurred to me that some people can have more thought processes going through their mind at a time.

So I thought about this for a while, and while asking my brother questions, I found he could only think of one major subject at a time.

If you asked him to do math, and then talked about a youtube video with him, he couldn't do it.

But he could simultaneously think about what he might have for dinner, and what he might have for breakfast. Now technically, I don't know if he was thinking back and forth between them quickly, but he can at least function on that while talking about breakfast and still have an answer on what he wanted for dinner at the end of the conversation.

 

I was wondering, for most of you, how many complicated things can you think of at once?

I can think of three, and at four I usually start to get confused and lose focus. For example, I can think about what my best friend meant when she said some things, what I have to do during school that day, and how much total gross income I'll make at my job this summer.

But if I think of more, I usually get too confused to actively think about each one.

 

How many things can you typically think about at one time? I'm thinking the average would be two, because not everyone seems to get confused when talking as often as others. But I understand how easily this could be biased. so I'm asking.

[CharonY]

There is quite a body of research of multitasking and related phenomena, but roughly speaking, people do not think or do a lot of things simultaneously. It is indeed a switching of tasks, and the switch itself incurs costs. There are some surprising findings why certain tasks become more difficult to switch to or away from, but roughly speaking, if there is a task/thought that you are more familiar with, they can take up more time to switch away from it. Also it depends on the difficulty of the task and whether you are actually paying attention to it, of course. In either case, switching frequently usually takes longer to fulfill tasks and is more error prone, due to the inherent cost of the switch itself.

[DrKrettin]

Would you not say that simultaneous language interpreting involves doing two things at the same time - listening, translating, speaking? Just a minute - that's three. It takes some training, so it's not an automatic ability.

 

It is certainly the case that thinking of more than one thing at once is increasingly more difficult as you get older. There are times when I have problems just thinking of one thing at once.

[Raider5678]

Would you not say that simultaneous language interpreting involves doing two things at the same time - listening, translating, speaking? Just a minute - that's three. It takes some training, so it's not an automatic ability.

 

It is certainly the case that thinking of more than one thing at once is increasingly more difficult as you get older. There are times when I have problems just thinking of one thing at once.

Yeah, I figured that would include multiple thought processes.

There is quite a body of research of multitasking and related phenomena, but roughly speaking, people do not think or do a lot of things simultaneously. It is indeed a switching of tasks, and the switch itself incurs costs. There are some surprising findings why certain tasks become more difficult to switch to or away from, but roughly speaking, if there is a task/thought that you are more familiar with, they can take up more time to switch away from it. Also it depends on the difficulty of the task and whether you are actually paying attention to it, of course. In either case, switching frequently usually takes longer to fulfill tasks and is more error prone, due to the inherent cost of the switch itself.

So I'm not actually thinking 3 things at once, I'm switching between them really really quickly and I don't notice?

I can actually believe that, since the brains neurons move incredibly quickly.

[iNow]

If such a thing exists, I suspect contextual overlap is important. Simultaneously listening and interpreting are much more closely related than simultaneously assembling IKEA furniture and changing a baby's diaper.

[DrKrettin]

If such a thing exists, I suspect contextual overlap is important. Simultaneously listening and interpreting are much more closely related than simultaneously assembling IKEA furniture and changing a baby's diaper.

 

That's not the best comparison really, because you would also need four hands, and for the last item, very little thought. But yes, I take your point.

[Phi for All]

People's perception of their ability to multitask is almost always exaggerated. As mentioned above, switching between tasks is often much more difficult than we give it credit for.

 

There are some things that go well together, such as the multiple tasks involved in cooking a meal. The other night I was making bacon cheeseburgers with seasoned fries. I had separate timers going for the the bacon in the top oven, the fries in the bottom oven, and the burgers on the grill, chopping up the veg while I waited for a timer to tell me to flip something (yes, I labeled the timers on my phone, "bacon", "burgers", & "fries").

 

Everything was going well until my sister-in-law asked me about something in my schedule for the next day. I told her I had too much going on at the moment to think about tomorrow. I didn't think it would throw me off as much as it did, but my burgers ended up two minutes behind the rest, and it usually works out perfectly.

 

I read an hypothesis quite a while ago that proposed women are better at seeing the bigger, strategic picture because they spent so long evolving as the "gatherers", while men became much more tactically oriented as the "hunters". I remember it seemed to make an intuitive sort of sense, but didn't have much evidence by experiment to back it up. It seems to me that women in general tend to think about a broader range of things that extend farther into the future, where men in general seem better at focused, short term goals.

 

Unfortunately, since then a study found that actually men are better at identifying targets from farther away. Intuition is a bitch.

[CharonY]

Would you not say that simultaneous language interpreting involves doing two things at the same time - listening, translating, speaking? Just a minute - that's three. It takes some training, so it's not an automatic ability.

 

It is certainly the case that thinking of more than one thing at once is increasingly more difficult as you get older. There are times when I have problems just thinking of one thing at once.

 

The mechanisms are not only closely related, but the processes are not functionally disconnected. One exception being listening and speaking. You will notice that if you e.g. give a speech, you will have trouble understanding someone talking to you, especially if they discuss more complex subjects.

Likewise, if you are unfamiliar with a language, translating it will become non-automatic and after listening you have to switch to a more active translation process.

 

This is quite easily tested in recall tasks where you try to recall things said to you while actively listening or while talking yourself. If you monitor yourself you will see that the more actively you are listening (which correlates with how well you will recall what is said to you), the more your speech pattern will change (typically slowing down, getting a bit rambly, repetitions etc.).

I read an hypothesis quite a while ago that proposed women are better at seeing the bigger, strategic picture because they spent so long evolving as the "gatherers", while men became much more tactically oriented as the "hunters". I remember it seemed to make an intuitive sort of sense, but didn't have much evidence by experiment to back it up. It seems to me that women in general tend to think about a broader range of things that extend farther into the future, where men in general seem better at focused, short term goals.

 

Unfortunately, since then a study found that actually men are better at identifying targets from farther away. Intuition is a bitch.

 

Yeah this is one of the reasons why I do have some problems with disciplines like evolutionary psychology. Too often they are heavy on narratives but too light on testable hypotheses. Depending on the tasks one can often find men or women performing similarly. In certain tasks, especially time-sensitive ones, it was found that women had the tendency to be more organized and if they were, they tended to perform better. But this is less indicative of a biological role but rather a gender-bias in how people approach certain tasks.

Edited May 9, 2017 by CharonY

[Bender]

I can only multitask when all but one of the tasks is automated. I can eg talk to someone while juggling and balancing on a cylinder, because the latter two are automated.

When someone talks to me in the car, I switch to automated driving, which means I'm very likely to default to the trajectory I'm most used to. I have even ended up at my previous appartment more than a year after moving, because I was deep in thought.

[Raider5678]

I can only multitask when all but one of the tasks is automated. I can eg talk to someone while juggling and balancing on a cylinder, because the latter two are automated.

When someone talks to me in the car, I switch to automated driving, which means I'm very likely to default to the trajectory I'm most used to. I have even ended up at my previous appartment more than a year after moving, because I was deep in thought.

Yeah, automating things typically results in doing the thing you're used to the most.

It happens to me fairly often.

People's perception of their ability to multitask is almost always exaggerated. As mentioned above, switching between tasks is often much more difficult than we give it credit for.

Multi-task, or think about a few things at once rather then one thing at a time?

I feel like they're different. Because one requires physically moving and one requires simply thinking.

[CharonY]

 

Multi-task, or think about a few things at once rather then one thing at a time?

I feel like they're different. Because one requires physically moving and one requires simply thinking.

 

There is not a whole lot of difference. The key point is how much attention you have to spend on a process. If you are extremely familiar to certain movements, you can physically move without paying much attention. So from this view point, it does now matter much whether a given task is physical or mental in nature.

[koti]

There are times when I have problems just thinking of one thing at once.

I'm with you on that one. I too have difficulties with multi tasking as I get older. Youre not taking into account one very important factor - the quality of your single-task thinking about a complex issue at age 50 for example requires that you access your 50 year old hardrive containing a magnitude of data and experiences wheres a kid (I was one so I remember) can multitask easier because his storage is almost empty and experiences are still yet to come.

Edited May 9, 2017 by koti

[Phi for All]

I'm with you on that one. I too have difficulties with multi tasking as I get older. Youre not taking into account one very important factor - the quality of your single-task thinking about a complex issue at age 50 for example requires that you access your 50 year old hardrive containing a magnitude of data and experiences wheres a kid (I was one so I remember) can multitask easier because his storage is almost empty and experiences are still yet to come.

 

I prefer to view wisdom as an added layer of information-building skills. Sometimes it makes us seem slower, or even crazy, or like we're having to process harder, but we're filtering our responses through greater experience. We're not having processing problems when we decide to let the forest burn instead of rushing to put it out. And we're not slogging through our full hard drive when we decide not to text with one hand while holding coffee and steering with the other.

[CharonY]

It depends really. With age and familiarity the effort to conduct a task can be more efficient than some untrained person. However, it seems to be generally true that in older people the cost of disengaging from a task is higher than in younger people. So there is added cost for multi-tasking. On the other hand, it also often means that younger people could be easier distracted from a particular task. In the end, the type of task(s) would define who would be more efficient in executing them.