If you cannot talk to two people at the same time, and lament that you wish you were a good multitasker, take heart, you might be a good multitasker after all.
A Cornell study reported that most people are pretty good at multitasking sensory material, but that when the sensory characteristics are too close in nature, problems arise.
That means that you might be able to listen to classical music and have a conversation or write a report at the same time, but that if you try to listen to two conversations at once, you will probably not be able to focus on both speakers.
In the study, participants had no problems in learning complex structures that were streamed at them, such as tones, colors and even speech.
However, the study showed that performance dropped when the two sets of sequences were from the same perceptual class of stimuli, such as two sets of speech stimuli. Overall, the results showed that humans have a very powerful learning system that allows them to learn from many different sources of stimuli- - as long as that stimuli isn't too similar.
So, if you want to listen to your iPod or participate in other forms of multitasking, in general, (as long as doing so is not against your Office's or Firm's policy), it should not affect you negatively by taking away your focus.
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