Multitasking for Aspies impossible???

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This is one of those areas where black-and-white thinking can be "deadly". I personally don't believe, at least from my own experience that "Aspies can't multitask" - being an Aspie, I have exhibited quite a bit of multitasking, but just not consistently.

Yet so much of the literature out there tends to speak in absolutes that Aspies can't multitask, whereas I see it as a grey area. Let's put it this way: I believe that it takes some forcible training and effort on one's part to multitask, it does not come instinctively, and occupational therapy has to tell you what cues to collectively focus on in a given context.

For instance, I found that I've selectively multi-tasked at work when it came to responding to emails and then going back to what I was doing, did not cause me too much consternation - unless I was really pressed for time on the task at hand...and also that in meetings, I would train my brain to focus about 80% on what the speaker at the time was saying (nonverbals included) and scan the other participants to gauge their reactions thru non-verbal. Sometimes it was still ambiguous though, and I admit to getting mentally drained by keeping this up for longer than half an hour, especially when the speaker expressed something I found was cryptic or did not add up (which, ironically, is probably the best time for me to scan reactions of others - it would reveal that I'm not the only one who feels "stupid".)

The one theory I read about (on Wikipedia) is monotropism vs. polytropism. They say that the autist brain is monotropic and the central challenge of ASD is giving complex but integrated thought to multiple threads of activity as opposed to intense thought on one activity. I found that through prolonged "forcing" of myself to adopt polytropism it did work somewhat, and has become natural in some areas. One "victory" I claim is that I've been driving for over a decade, and never caused an accident. Even there'll be times where my wife will say it's OK to do a left turn, but I'll say no, that guy over there is just zipping out of the parking lot, I'll cut him off. And all indicators are that's what would have happened as he zoomed by while I stayed put. For me scanning the horizon on the road is instinctive and I have good response/reflex. However, I disagree with eating while driving, my wife does it though, and she thought I was weird for telling her that I'm not good at driving while eating. Go figure (and yes my wife is NT)

I must dig up the video again.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr8qLknWJL0[/youtube]

Multi-core CPU's actually do multitask. Some humans might have multi-threaded brains, but mine does not work that way. The NT brain seems much more like a GPU, or maybe even an APU to me.

I know personally, I'm an aspie, and I am entirely able to multitask. In fact, the reason I can multitask so well is because of aspie traits of me.

I tend to not be able to filter out background information. Comparing to how other people talk about things, I notice sensory details a lot more than anyone else I know, I hear all conversations concurrently, and process each of them, I notice things happening even when looking at something else.


This has led me to, if I remove some of these stimuli, be incredibly good at replacing seeing them with multitasking. Its controlled, and if I try to do too much I get overwhelmed and start overloading, but as a whole, multitasking is actually easy for me. I actually tend to be better at multitasking than many of the NT people I know.


I think what it comes down to in my case is that I'm constantly multitasking, I must always be, so I have trained myself to control my multitasking beyond just my sensory inputs. I definitely can focus on more things when I actively remove stimuli.

I do think it is a learned behavior, one I taught myself taking advantage of the fact that I was doing it anyways. And I'm certain that I need to take breaks, where I just let myself do nothing but curl up somewhere and read, but multitasking isn't impossible for all aspies. I personally am one which multitasks well because of specific aspie traits of mine.

Multi-tasking isn't impossible for me. I do however find it extremely unpleasant, stressful, energy sucking, and a major cause of irritability.

Internally, I actually have a fairly strong capacity for certain forms of multitasking. My mind is divided into multiple semi-independent sections, each of which has a different purpose (each also has characteristics of a different personality type, but my form of compartmentalization is just looser integration of functions rather than multiple personalities). Each section is more or less monotropic within itself. Due to this, I am usually better at internally multitasking dissimilar tasks than similar ones. Externally, I am also capable of multitasking to some extent, but I think that I am somewhat more limited there than non-autistics (or at least, most of them).

I think I read somewhere that researchers had found that for conscious tasks the maximum was 2 tasks without "context switching", they think it's because our cerebral cortex is split into two hemispheres (we are essentially "dual core"). Of course we're able to do several things at the same time; like walk, and talk, and chew bubble gum (although some US presidents could not, apparently) because this is controlled by the more primitive parts of the brain (the "motherboard", to use the computer analogy). There seem to be no additional cost when doing two tasks in parallel (as long as you don't have to physically move from place to place of course), compared to do just one, then the other; e.g. if two tasks takes one hour each, doing them in parallel takes two hours; but 4 one hour tasks (when done by themselves), may take say 5-6 hours (I just made up the numbers, but I think it were quite significant costs).
People who are good at multitasking, have a good working memory and are able to context switch relatively easy, compared to those who's not. But if you try to do too many things at the same time, you'll end up doing them very poorly, or use ridiculously more time than if you did them one at a time.

I've also read that multitasking (even though our brain is more a network than a cpu), just like in a single/dual core computer is expensive. But there's an illusion that makes us ignore the cost of multitasking; our conciousness is blind to the time spent switching tasks (just like our vision is suspended while moving our eye and blinking, so we doesn't have to cope with motion blur and everything going black all the time) possibly because we're too buisy doing the switch to notice time passing. For every mental task we add (beyond 2) there's a substantial penalty in effectiveness. But if you're doing just one task you may do part of it in paralell, complex tasks involving multiple inputs and outputs, such as driving seem to benefit from using both "cores". Several experiments shows that talking to someone (especially over a poor audio channel such as a cellphone, regardless of whether handsfree or not) deteriorates your driving ability to a level comparable to being drunk.

We really should not celebrate multitasking as much, it's generally harmful.

I can't multitask when I have to do two very different things at once and quickly switch my attention between them. I can only multitask when I do two similar things at once, such as cooking two pots of food on the same stove. Disaster may ensue, but only 25% of the time, as judged by my standards of palatability, and 75% of the time, as judged by the palatability standards of others.

I much prefer to focus on one task at a time. I suck at doing more than one thing at once. That's why I don't cook. I always burn it.

I can multi task. I just switch back and forth.

I remember when I first heard of doing two things at once or more than once thing, I took it literal thinking you know what. But no it just means switching back and forth. It does not literally mean doing two things at once. No one can do that, duh. Okay unless you are cooking, you can have more than one thing on the burner as you are making something. That's doing more than one thing at once.