Women can't multitask either as per a new study

Updated on: Monday, March 11, 2013

Scientists have debunked the commonly held belief that men can't multi-task but women can.

Professor Nick Chater from the Warwick Business School shows in a six-part series called 'The Human Zoo' on BBC Radio Four that neither sex are very good at doing more than one thing at a time.

The professor of Behavioural Science reveals that when doing something routine and well-practised humans can do two things at once, like driving and talking.

But when anything non-routine is introduced then multi-tasking is just not possible for the human mind.

"Most of the things that we find that are reasonably challenging we can only do one at a time. We think we are multi-tasking but in fact we are interleaving from one task to the next quite rapidly, something we don't have to do if we practice," Chater said.

"If we practice we get very fluent at something and it requires almost no mental effort, like driving and listening to the radio," Chater said in a statement.

"When you are trying to strain your memory or when we have to do something remotely difficult we have to stop doing something else. Mental and physical energy is more connected than you imagine," he added.

"We can't keep mental processes entirely separate from each other. If we are doing routine things that is fine, but if we do something non-routine suddenly other parts of the brain start to engage and interfere with routine things like walking," he said.

Women can't multitask either as per a new study

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