New perspectives on human multitasking

Doing several things at the same time is an ability humans often rely on in their daily lives without truly giving it too much of notice. Scientific research, however, has informed us that this ability is all but a given, revealing its rather complex nature over the past years. Investigating the topic of human multitasking brings its own challenges, such as finding a proper way to specify what is meant by the term ‘task’, which is obviously a critical element for properly defining what is meant by ‘multi-tasks’. Here, we define multitasking as a condition in which cognitive processes belonging to two or more tasks overlap in time (c.f., Koch et al., 2017). Such a broad definition of multitasking is clearly beneficial as it includes a relatively wide range of research paradigms, such as those used to investigate dual tasking (for review see Pashler, 2000) and task switching (for review see Kiesel et al., 2010; Monsell, 2003; Vandierendonck, Liefooghe, & Verbruggen, 2010). The challenge, however, becomes evident when trying to investigate more complex (i.e., hierarchical or multi-step) tasks, for which one can question the level at which the actual tasks take place. …