Abstract
According to a popular stereotype, women are better at multitasking than men, but empirical evidence for gender differences in multitasking performance is mixed. Previous work has focused on specific aspects of multitasking or has not considered gender differences in abilities contributing to multitasking performance. We therefore tested gender differences (N = 96, 50% female) in sequential (i.e., task switching) and concurrent (i.e., dual tasking) multitasking, while controlling for possible gender differences in working memory, processing speed, spatial abilities, and fluid intelligence. Applying two standard experimental paradigms allowed us to test multitasking abilities across five different empirical indices (i.e., performance costs) for both reaction time (RT) and accuracy measures, respectively. Multitasking resulted in substantial performance costs across all experimental conditions without a single significant gender difference in any of these ten measures, even when controlling for gender differences in underlying cognitive abilities. Thus, our results do not confirm the widespread stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men at least in the popular sequential and concurrent multitasking settings used in the present study.
Highlights
It is a widely held belief that women outperform men in multitasking situations, possibly because of an evolutionary advantage and extensive multitasking practice resulting from managing children, household, and jobs [1, 2]
This study provides first evidence indicating that the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect might reflect at least partly processes related to the engagement and disengagement and/or inhibition of task sets
Mixing costs were larger with long RSI than short RSI [8]
Summary
It is a widely held belief that women outperform men in multitasking situations, possibly because of an evolutionary advantage and extensive multitasking practice resulting from managing children, household, and jobs [1, 2]. Multitasking is a broad construct that can be operationalized and measured in numerous ways [4]. It refers to activities in which multiple tasks, each associated with a separate task set, are performed in a limited time period, leading to a temporal overlap of the cognitive processes in performing these tasks. Such temporal overlaps of cognitive processes involved in performing multiple tasks occur, for instance, in task-switching (i.e., sequential multitasking) and dual-task (i.e., concurrent multitasking) contexts (see [5] for a review).
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