Clifford Nass Was a pretty cool person Worked with other cool researchers Sociologist interested in interactions between humans and computers Wrote The Man Who Lied to His Laptop and What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships
Multithreading: the ability of the CPU to execute multiple processes concurrently, or an execution model that allows one process to have more than one thread. Multitasking: the ability to handle multiple tasks at once
“Frequent multitaskers find it very difficult to focus, even when they are pried away from technology. (...) They fail to notice emotional signals in people’s voices, faces and posture.” Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 12
“even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time” http://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx
Even when frequent multitaskers focus on doing just one thing, the use of their brain is less effective. Details at http://business.time.com/2013/04/17/dont-multitask-your-brain-will-thank-you/
Being forced to multitask: is a manifestation of an underlying organizational problem, can be caused by: ➔ too much work, ➔ understaffing, ➔ suboptimal prioritization, ➔ ...
The experiment: Two groups of people, Both perform the same task on identical computers, One group fills questionnaire on the tested computer, Other group fills questionnaire on another computer.
“users entered more positive responses on the computer that asked about itself than they did on the separate (...) computer.” Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 7
The experiment: A tutoring computer presented facts and asked how well users knew them, A testing computer ran a quiz checking what participants learned, A grading computer asked to rate the tutoring computer, Half grading computers were positive, the other half - critical.
The grading computers that were more critical scored lower on likeability but higher on intelligence. Details in Clifford Nass, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, p. 45-53
“Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism sounds superficial.” Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/21/why-does-pessimism-sound-so-smart.aspx
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