Each month, the NSF Current newsletter highlights research and
education efforts supported by the National Science Foundation.
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please use the links below: In 2010, over 3,000 people were
killed in distracted-driving crashes, according to the U.S.
Department of Transportation. A recent NSF-supported study
confirmed that multitasking seriously hurts performance.
However, the researchers also found that people are better at
juggling some types of multitasking than they are at others.
Trying to do two visual tasks at once--such as texting and
driving--impairs performance significantly more than combining
an audio and a visual task, such as talking on the phone while
driving. Furthermore, people doing two visual tasks at the same
time rated their performance much higher than it actually was.
"Many people have this overconfidence in how well they can
multitask, and our study shows that partic