Multitasking Myths

By Claire Nurden
Research and Policy Officer

Now I’m no scientist, so I can’t question the validity of the research findings on older people’s ability to multitask, which have been widely reported in today’s media. But we can question the nature of the reporting of these findings, and the skewed impression it gives about people’s capabilities in their later years.

The headlines (unsurprisingly) seize on the evidence that older brains are ‘less nimble’ in their ability to deal with more than one situation at once, and that the ability to multitask ‘wanes’ with age. But surely the point here is not how many tasks you do at once, but how well you can do them. The added skills and experience many older people bring to bear on the situations they are faced with could, in fact, counter any supposed decline in pure processing ability. This point is made very strongly in the recent Lewis Wolport book on ageing.

While some changes in brain functions might occur as we age, we shouldn’t be reporting this as if it was the only thing – or even the most important thing – about getting older.