Table of Contents
Passage
A Talking on the phone while driving isn’ t the only situation where we’re worse at multitasking than we might like to think we are. New studies have identified a bottleneck in our brains that some say means we are fundamentally incapable of true multitasking If experimental findings reflect real-world performance, people who think they are multitasking are probably just underperforming in all-or at best, all but one-of their parallel pursuits. Practice might improve your performance, but you will never be as good as when focusing on one task at a time.
B The problem, according to Rene Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is that there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this, Marois devised an experiment to locate it. Volunteers watch a screen and when a particular image appears, a red circle, say, they have to press a key with their index finger. Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers. Typical response time is about half a second, and the volunteers quickly reach their peak performance. Then they learn to listen to different recordings and respond by making a specific sound. For instance, when they hear a bird chirp, they have to say “ba”; an electronic sound should elicit a “ko”, and so on. Again, no problem. A normal person can do that in about half a second, with almost no effort.
C The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, then almost immediately plays them a sound. Now they’ re flummoxed. “If you show an image and play a sound at the same time, one task is postponed,” he says. In fact, if the second task is introduced within the half-second or so it takes to process and react to the first, it will simply be delayed until the first one is done. The largest dual-task delays occur when the two tasks are presented simultaneously; delays progressively shorten as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.
D There are at least three points where we seem to get stuck, says Marois. The first is in simply identifying what we’ re looking at. This can take a few tenths of a second, during which time we are not able to see and recognise a s e c o n d i t em. Th is limitation is known as the “attentional blink”: experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of concentration, it may register in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it. Interestingly, if you don ’ t expect the first event, you have no trouble responding to the second. What exactly causes the attentional blink is still a matter for debate.
E A second limitation is in our short-term visual memory. It ’s estimated that we can keep track of about four items at a time, fewer if they are complex. This capacity shortage is thought to explain, in part, our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in scenes that are otherwise identical, so-called “change blindness”. Show people pairs of near-identical photos—say, aircraft engines in one picture have disappeared in the other—and they will fail to spot the differences. Here again, though, there is disagreement about what the essential limiting factor really is. Does it come down to a dearth of storage capacity, or is it about how much attention a viewer is paying?
F A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus—braking when you see a child in the road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that she’s thinking of leaving your dad-also takes brainpower. Selecting a response to one of these things will delay by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other. This is called the “response selection bottleneck” theory, first proposed in 1952.
G But David Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, doesn’t buy the bottleneck idea. He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used by the brain to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known as something of an optimist by his peers. He has written papers with titles like “Virtually perfect time-sharing in dualtask performance: Uncorking the central cognitive bottleneck “. His experiments have shown that with enough practice—at least 2000 tries—some people can execute two tasks simultaneously as competently as if they were doing them one after the other. He suggests that there is a central cognitive processor that coordinates all this and, what’s more, he thinks it uses discretion: sometimes it chooses to delay one task while completing another.
H Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects. He has found that with just 1 hour of practice each day for two weeks, volunteers show a huge improvement at managing both his tasks at once. Where he disagrees with Meyer is in what the brain is doing to achieve this. Marois speculates that practice might give us the chance to find less congested circuits to execute a task-rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid heavy traffic on main roads— effectively making our response to the task subconscious. After all, there are plenty of examples of subconscious multitasking that most of us routinely manage: walking and talking, eating and reading, watching TV and folding the laundry.
I It probably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse at multitasking as we age. According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who studies how aging affects our cognitive abilities, we peak in our 20s. Though the decline is slow through our 30s and on into our 50s, it is there; and after 55, it becomes more precipitous. In one study, he and his colleagues had both young and old participants do a simulated driving task while carrying on a conversation. He found that while young drivers tended to miss background changes, older drivers failed to notice things that were highly relevant. Likewise, older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene than young drivers.
J It’s not all bad news for over-55s, though. Kramer also found that older people can benefit from practice. Not only did they learn to perform better, brain scans showed that underlying that improvement was a change in the way their brains become active. While it’ s clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age, the basic facts remain sobering. “We have this impression of an almighty complex brain,“ says Marois, “and yet we have very humbling and crippling limits.” For most of our history, we probably never needed to do more than one thing at a time, he says, and so we haven’t evolved to be able to. Perhaps we will in future, though. We might yet look back one day on people like Debbie and Alun as ancestors of a new breed of true multitaskers
Questions
Questions 28-32 The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-J. in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.
28 A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction
29 Different age group responds to important things differently
30 Conflicts happened when visual and audio element emerge simultaneously
31 An experiment designed to demonstrates blocks for multitasking
32 An viewpoint favors optimistic side of multitask performance
Questions 33-35 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.
33 Which one is correct about experiment conducted by Rene Marois?
A participants performed poorly on listening task solely
B volunteers press different key on different color
C participants need use different fingers on different colored object
D they did a better job on Mixed image and sound information
34 Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?
A “attentional blink” takes about ten seconds
B lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while second one appears
C we always have trouble in reacting the second one
D first limitation can be avoid by certain measures
35 Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?
A people can execute dual-task just after several attempts
B Practice can overcome dual-task interference
C Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois’s theory
D an existing processor decides whether delay another task or not
Questions 36-40 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the sataement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
36 Longer gap between two presenting tasks means shorter delay toward the second one.
37 People tend to ignore the differences when presented two similar images.
38 Marois has different opinion on the claim that training removes bottleneck effect.
39 Multitasking performance has correlation with gender according to Art Kramer.
40 The author doesn’t believe that effect of practice could bring any variation.
Answers
Below are the answers, key words and full explanations for the IELTS Reading passage The Multitasking Debate (Passage 3, Questions 28–40).
Questions 28–32: Matching Information (which paragraph A–J contains the information)
28. A theory that explains the delay when selecting one reaction
Answer: F
Key words: response selection, bottleneck, 1952
Explanation: “Selecting a response … will delay by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other. This is called the ‘response selection bottleneck’ theory, first proposed in 1952.“
Answer: F
29. Different age groups respond to important things differently
Answer: I
Key words: young and old, drivers, relevant
Explanation: “young drivers tended to miss background changes, older drivers failed to notice things that were highly relevant … older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene.“
Answer: I
30. Conflict when a visual and an audio element appear simultaneously
Answer: C
Key words: image, sound, at the same time, postponed
Explanation: “If you show an image and play a sound at the same time, one task is postponed.“
Answer: C
31. An experiment designed to demonstrate the blocks to multitasking
Answer: B
Key words: Marois devised an experiment, sticking point
Explanation: “there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this, Marois devised an experiment to locate it.“
Answer: B
32. A viewpoint favouring the optimistic side of multitasking performance
Answer: G
Key words: David Meyer, optimist, virtually perfect time-sharing
Explanation: Meyer “doesn’t buy the bottleneck idea … is known as something of an optimist … ‘Virtually perfect time-sharing in dual-task performance.’“
Answer: G
Questions 33–35: Multiple Choice
33. Which one is correct about the experiment conducted by Rene Marois?
Answer: C — participants need to use different fingers for differently coloured objects
Key words: different coloured circles, different fingers
Explanation: “Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers.” (A/B/D are not supported — the mixed image-and-sound condition made them worse, not better.)
Answer: C
34. Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?
Answer: B — a lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while a second one appears
Key words: attentional blink, window of concentration
Explanation: The first limitation is the “attentional blink”: “if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window … you will be unable to act upon it.” (It takes tenths of a second, not ten seconds; and if you don’t expect the first event you can respond to the second — so A and C are wrong.)
Answer: B
35. Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?
Answer: A — people can execute a dual-task just after several attempts
Key words: at least 2000 tries
Explanation: Meyer’s experiments needed “enough practice—at least 2000 tries“, so “just after several attempts” is false. (B, C and D are all supported by the passage.)
Answer: A
Questions 36–40: True / False / Not Given
36. A longer gap between the two presented tasks means a shorter delay for the second one.
Answer: TRUE
Key words: interval, delays shorten
Explanation: “delays progressively shorten as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.“
Answer: TRUE
37. People tend to ignore the differences when presented with two similar images.
Answer: TRUE
Key words: change blindness, fail to spot differences
Explanation: “Show people pairs of near-identical photos … and they will fail to spot the differences” (change blindness).
Answer: TRUE
38. Marois has a different opinion on the claim that training removes the bottleneck effect.
Answer: FALSE
Key words: Marois agrees, practice can erase interference
Explanation: “Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects.” He agrees on the effect of training (he only differs on the mechanism), so the statement is false.
Answer: FALSE
39. Multitasking performance correlates with gender according to Art Kramer.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
Key words: age, not gender
Explanation: Kramer’s work concerns age (“we peak in our 20s”), not gender; gender is never mentioned.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
40. The author doesn’t believe that the effect of practice could bring any variation.
Answer: FALSE
Key words: practice can make a difference
Explanation: “While it’s clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age …” — the author does believe practice brings change, so the statement is false.
Answer: FALSE
Answer Key (Quick Reference)
| Q | Answer | Q | Answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | F | 35 | A |
| 29 | I | 36 | TRUE |
| 30 | C | 37 | TRUE |
| 31 | B | 38 | FALSE |
| 32 | G | 39 | NOT GIVEN |
| 33 | C | 40 | FALSE |
| 34 | B |
