A
Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishingyour homework? People who have these kinds of habits are called multi-taskers.Multitaskers are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing theirfocus. However, Thomas Lehman, a researcher in Psychology, believes peoplenever really do multiple things simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading whilelistening to music, but in reality, the brain can only focus on one task.Reading the words in a book will cause you to ignore some of the words of themusic. When people think they are accomplishing two different tasksefficiently, what they are really doing is dividing their focus. Whilelistening to music, people become less able to focus on their surroundings. Forexample, we all have experience of times when we talk with friends and they arenot responding properly. Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, ormaybe they are reading a text on their smart phone and don’t hear what you are saying. Lehman called this phenomenon “email voice”
B
the world has been changed by computers and its spin offs like smart-phones orcellphones. Now that most individuals have a personal device, like asmart-phone or a laptop, they are frequently reading, watching or listening tovirtual information. This raises the occurrence of multitasking in our day today life. Now when you work, you work with your typewriter, your cellphone, andsome colleagues who may drop by at any time to speak with you. In professionalmeetings, when one normally focuses and listens to one another, people are morelikely to have a cell phone in their lap, reading or communicating silentlywith more people than ever, liven inventions such as the cordless phone hasincreased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone would ring,and then the housewife would have to stop her activities to answer it. When itrang, the housewife will sit down with her legs up. and chat, with no laundryor sweeping or answering the door. In the modern era, our technology isconvenient enough to not interrupt our daily tasks.
C
Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studiedthe prefrontal cortex, which controls the brain while a person is multitasking.According to his studies, the size of this cortex varies between species, Hefound that for humans, the size of this part constitutes one third of thebrain, while it is only 4 to 5 percent in dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Giventhat this cortex is larger on a human, it allows a human to be more flexibleand accurate in his or her multitasking.. However, Miller wanted to lookfurther into whether the cortex was truly processing information about twodifferent tasks
simultaneously. He designed an experiment where he presents visual stimulantsto his subjects in a wax that mimics multi-tasking. Miller then attachedsensors to the patients ” heads to pick up the electricpatterns of the brain. This sensor would show if ” the brain particles, calledneurons, were truly processing two different tasks. What he found is that thebrain neurons only lit up in singular areas one at a time, and neversimultaneously.
D
Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan, studied the young adults ina similar experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math problems andclassify simple words into different categories. For this experiment. Meyerfound that when you think you are doing several jobs at the same time, you areactually switching between jobs. Even though the people tried to do the tasksat the same time, and both tasks were eventually accomplished, overall, thetask look more time than if the person focused on a single task one at a time.
E
People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking, Gloria Mark set office workersas his subjects. He found that they were constantly multitasking. He observedthat nearly every 11 minutes people at work were disrupted. He found that doingdifferent jobs at the same time may actually save time. However, despite thefact that they are faster, it does not mean they are more efficient. And we areequally likely to self-interrupt as be interrupted by outside sources. He foundthat in office nearly every 12 minutes an employee would stop and with noreason at all, cheek a website on their computer, call someone or write anemail. If they concentrated for more than 20 minutes, they would feeldistressed. He suggested that the average person may suffer from a shortconcentration span. This short attention span might be natural, but otherssuggest that new technology may be the problem. With cellphones and computersat our sides at all times, people will never run out of distractions. Theformat of media, such as advertisements, music, news articles and TV shows arealso shortening, so people are used to paying attention to information for avery short time
F
So even though focusing on one single task is the most efficient way for ourbrains to work, it is not practical to use this method in real life. Accordingto human nature, people feel more comfortable and efficient in environmentswith a variety of tasks, Edward Hallowell said that people are losing a lot ofefficiency in the workplace due to multitasking, outside distractions andself-distractions. As it matter of fact, the changes made to the workplace donot have to be dramatic. No one is suggesting we ban e-mail or make employeesfocus on only one task. However, certain common workplace tasks, such as groupmeetings, would be more efficient if we banned cell-phones, a commondistraction. A person can also apply these tips to prevent self-distraction.Instead of arriving to your office and checking all of your e-mails for newtasks, a common workplace ritual, a person could dedicate an hour to a singletask first thing in the morning. Self-timing is a great way to reducedistraction and efficiently finish tasks one by one, instead of slowingourselves down with multi-tasking.
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-18 on your answersheet.
14 _____________ a reference to a domestic situation that does not requiremultitasking
15 _____________ a possible explanation of why we always do multitasktogether
16 _____________ a practical solution to multitask in work environment
17 _____________ relating multitasking to the size of prefrontal cortex
18 _____________ longer time spent doing two tasks at the same time thanone at a time
Questions 19-23
Show Notepad
Look at the following statements (Questions 19-23) and the list ofscientists below. Match each statement with the correct scientist, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 19-23 on your answersheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
19 _____________ When faced multiple visual stimulants, one can onlyconcentrate on one of them.
20 _____________ Doing two things together may be faster but not better.
21 _____________ People never really do two things together even if youthink you do.
22 _____________ The causes of multitask lie in the environment.
23 _____________ Even minor changes in the workplace will improve workefficiency.
Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
A term used to refer to a situation when you are reading a text and cannotfocus on your surroundings is 24 _________________
The 25 _________________ part of the brain controls multitasking.
The practical solution of multitask in work is not to allow use of cellphonein 26 _________________
答案：
14.B 15.E 16.F 17.C 18.D 19.B 20.D 21.A 22.E
23.E 24.email voice 25. prefrontal cortex 26.grop meetings
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