Multitasking | featured news

“I think you like testing yourself to see how much you can squeeze into a day,” my husband has said to me on more than one occasion. And, on more than one occasion, his hypothesis has added another item to my day’s things-to-do list: argue with husband. Now, I have some empirical evidence that my constant multi-tasking is neither a personal proclivity nor an enjoyable practice.

The elderly have a harder time multi-tasking than young adults because older people are far less nimble at switching neurological connections in their brains between activities, according to research released on Monday.

Chatting on a cell phone while attempting to cross the street may be particularly hazardous for older adults, a new study suggests.

There are many reasons for memory lapses, including aging, stress, lack of sleep or distraction, but there are signals when it's serious.

Some of Apple's iPhones and its new iPad devices will soon be able to run more than one program at a time, something that phones from Apple's rivals already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.

The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That's the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.

"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department, said in a telephone interview.

Palm's comeback attempt rests squarely on the notion that it has found a better way to manage your complicated digital life.