Multitasking test

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Here are some excerpts about those tests:

About high multitaskers (who perform bad in the two tests):


Sources: 1, 2

Out of this information I would conclude that it would not be unusual to perform with 100% easily on the focus test while answering the first switching test slowly. If focusing on something is easy it may require some time or may get you stuck on it which could be a reason for slow answers.
While high multitaskers answer slowly because they can't concentrate well (get easily distracted), rather than because they do concentrate well and quickly.

Aditional switch time 7 ms.

Is this really low or something? A friend who is also an aspie got 3481.

Last edited by proxybear on 03 Mar 2012, 7:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

I did better than low and high multitaskers on switching test, in the 800s ms for both switching and repeating. Repeating was slightly slower than switching. 100% for focus test.

In real life, don't like to multi-task, but can do it for certain combinations of activities, e.g. cooking several things at the same time, doing several lab experiments at the same time. But not for others, e.g. talking to someone while driving, will fark up.

These are screens of my results, I don't exactly understand the results in the first picture can anyone explain them to me please?

The more MS you've got the worse you did. The ones who spend more time one the tasks tend to be good at multitasking and vica versa.



If you look at my results you'll notice that my performance is much better, and is slightly below (better) low multitasker results. Which means that I am probably bad at multitasking, while yours means the exact opposite.



The focus one is similar in how the results work, but I cannot fathom how anyone would get anything wrong on that test seeing as it was extremely easy.

Thanks for the explanation

Just tried the second task and got 92% in both conditions, although it looks like the general performance is too high (i.e. task to easy) to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. Might be harder if they changed the spatial location of the red bars as well as possibly rotating them, sometimes I could just tell something had changed without being explicitly able to say which had rotated.

I'm sorry. I'm not understanding how to read the graph because I'm really stupid about that kind of thing. My bar came up much higher than both of the other groups for switching and repeating, and lower than both for speed. I initially thought that meant I did better in task switching and repeating, and worse in speed. That would make sense, as my processing speed and reaction time tends to be pathologically low. I don't drive partially for that reason. However, when I read more about it -- it sound like I have it backwards -- the higher the bar, the worse the performance -- is that right? That would mean my timing was good and everything else was atrocious. It's weird, though. I got nothing incorrect, but hesitated at times in order to process the information I needed to arrive at a correct response. Thuse the "lower/ better" thing doesn't seem to make sense for me, but the more I think about it, that's what the results seem to mean.
I'm completely lost and confused now, which is honeslty pretty typical for me.
ETA: On the task with the rectangles, I scored 100% when there were two distractions, and 92% when there were six distractions. My visual processing skills are abyssmal. That's one way I'm not like other aspies. I seem to have all of the impairments assiciated with being an aspie, and none of the strengths.
My visual-spatial LD really showed itself with these tasks.

I got 92% when there were 6 distractions. I think I'm the only one here who didn't get 100% on both tasks. Wow, I really am severely impaired. The problem is, the image would flash off so quickly, and I couldn't always make sense of what I was seeing that quickly. I also tend to need to blink far more often than other humans, and I would sometimes blink and miss one of the images completely. I'm going to take that test again, because I'm feeling exceptionally dumb and defective right now.

ETA: Agh, I did even worse. I really am very imapied. The trouble is, I have really poor spatial recall and working memory, and I couldn't always remember how the rectangles were positioned a second ago. Wow, apparently I'm really severely impaired. The sad thing is, I've been doing this online brain training program for the past hundred days, training every day. There has been improvement, and my overall percentile rank relative to others my age is 68%. My highest score is in problem solving, currently at 87%, and my lowest is in attention, currently at 38%. I thought my cognitive function was getting better, but apparently not. Apparently, I'm only getting better at the lumosity exercises, but not generalizing that to other tasks. Sometimes I think that I should be in an institution, that I'm just too cognitively impaired to live and work in civilization.

Last edited by OuterBoroughGirl on 03 Mar 2012, 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The white bar stands for the average results for people who often do multitasking (thus called "high multitaskers") which doesn't mean that you do a lot of multitasking (or are good at it). The grey bar stands for the average results for people who don't or barely do multitasking in their daily life which doesn not mean that you have the same behaviour(or that you are bad at multitasking).
This letters and numbers test is about testing your abilites to switch from one thing to another fast and well (in quantity and quality). If you needed more time and responded slowly this test does not explain why rather than just show you if you are good at this task or not and compares it to the results of a study concerning people who frequently multitask and those who don't.
High multitaskers perform worse at every test because they are unable to filter and are distracted by irrelevant information (remember they did worse at the two tests).
The focus test is about distraction and concentration. Can you filter out irrelevant information? "High multitaskers" are bad at filtering and concentration on the relevant (they don't score 100%).

So those tests don't show you the cause and no explanation about your results. They only compare your results with results from their study.

Multi task switching 2392ms repeating 2495, I was actually worse On repeated tasks. I was -102ms negative on switching.

I kind of screwed up the multitasking test, I didn't read the instructions properly so i was focusing on the red AND blue. It want till half way through the test I realised they never answered any questions.. The first result was vastly superior on simple , and in line with single tasters on multiple.

When repeated understanding the test it was 100% and 92%, that was pretty easy.

Jason

How is this multitasking? This aren't tested for how well you multi-task, only tests where people who multi-task a lot fail.

Looking at the graphs I appear to be in the brain damaged region for speed, which means I must be an extreme multitasker. For the rectangle test, I always scored between the multi-taskers and the non-multitaskers, but I was always on the the high region, I got I identical score for high and low level of distraction. No, I cannot store a billion objects at once in my short term memory, I just only focused on the red blocks. The only reason I got some wrong is because sometimes the thing flash too fast for me to process how the rectangles were skewed.

I say this test is bollocks, but I think it does say something, namely that there may be a connection between low processing speed and ADD or something.

Last edited by Ganondox on 03 Mar 2012, 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't understand my results. Am I low or high ?

The second (focus) one was just super easy for me:

Last edited by 65536 on 03 Mar 2012, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ok, I've lost all respect for Stanford.

On the first test I got off the charts bad. Something like 5000 ms. Shockingly bad. I got most right but not all. I just couldn't process it right. I am NOT a multitasker at all. The number/ letter flashing is too quick and most of the time I missed it and also guessed. My short term memory is horrible. On the second test on both versions of distractions I got the same number. Only 83% correct. That is far worse than anyone on here but it was the easier test for me.

If the test shows a marked difference between two types of NTs then it is valid. However it was not designed to handle autistic ways of thinking.

Not really. It means your cognitive processing is slower than most people. From what I can see, the difference between the two scores is more important then the absolute values of the scores. Again if like me your brain processes each task completely separately then you will get an unusual score. I think this comes down to the autistic tendency to focus on details. An NT would see the whole test as one task while many of us see each part as a completely independent task.

Again I think that comes down to focusing on details, something that we tend to be very good at.

Tell me about it. They were on the very limit of what I could handle.