A new university study shows that as we age, it gets tougher to successfully “multitask,” or remembering to complete one task while distracted by another.
Using brain scans, a team of UC San Francisco researchers have discovered that people over age 60 are less agile in switching from one neural network to another — which means that brief attention-grabbing interruptions can undermine their ability to recall the original task.
“A lot of us feel the need to respond really rapidly to an email or text message,” said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, director of the UCSF Neuroscience Imaging Center and senior author of the study, which was published in Monday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If we stop what we’re doing to send a reply, Gazzaley says, “there may be a price to be paid.”
While others have observed that aging adults experience difficulty completing a task after a distraction, no one had explored neurological science to learn why.
The problem is central to daily life as increasing numbers of digital distractions — such as electronic messages, alerts and feeds — demand our attention, interrupting the process of retaining information from deep learning.
The topic has growing relevance “especially as older adults stay in the workplace later “… and the societal expectations increase about how quickly we should respond” to interruptions, Gazzaley said. (more…)