Thanks so much for contributing your thoughts on this topic. Thanks also for sharing the “Cognitive control in media multitaskers” article -very interesting!

Certainly, being multi-lingual (in your case trilingual ~so awesome BTW!) leads to effective communication as you have the ability to surpass language and cultural barriers.

(Sigh) This is one of the many reasons why I love Canada so much!

Land of many cultures and home of the self-proclaimed multi-taskers

I am a strong believer in science (evidence based knowledge), which has empowered me in my beliefs of any kind.

From social standpoint, at least in the cultures I am familiar with (I am a trilingual), not paying attention to an interlocutor (friend/colleague/spouse etc) is an ineffective (not to mention impolite) way of communicating and I agree with you 110%.

Human mind works best when it is focused. This is a fact.

An interesting article/comment by Ophir et al:

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Sep 15;106(37):15583-7. Epub 2009 Aug 24.

Cognitive control in media multitaskers.
Ophir E, Nass C, Wagner AD.

Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2050, USA.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Sep 15;106(37):15521-2.

Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A series of experiments addressed whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between chronically heavy and light media multitaskers. A trait media multitasking index was developed to identify groups of heavy and light media multitaskers. These two groups were then compared along established cognitive control dimensions. Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory (Shary’s comment: This is no good for dancers ). This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. These results demonstrate that media multitasking, a rapidly growing societal trend, is associated with a distinct approach to fundamental information processing.