March 31, 2023 • 9 mins
Even seemingly passive activities (like listening to music) can interrupt our brains while we're doing something important (like driving). Learn why we're so bad at multitasking in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/turn-down-radio-when-lost.htm
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
In the nineteen thirties, there was a bit of a
war over radios in cars. All legislators argued that car
radios were distracting and hazardous. The Radio Manufacturers Association countered
(00:22):
that passengers were more of a driver distraction than a
car radio. Listening to the radio, they claimed was safer
than even looking in the rearview mirror. But Illinois, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, and Ohio legislatures all considered implementing
car radio fines, and in nineteen thirty five, Connecticut legislators
actually did introduce a bill that would have placed a
(00:44):
steep fine on radio installation of fifty dollars in nineteen
thirty five, which is over a thousand today. Others considered
making car radio installation a crime. It wasn't until nineteen
thirty nine, though, that anyone actually study weather a correlation
between car radios and car crashes existed. The Princeton Radio
(01:06):
Research Project determined that car radios played little no role
in car accidents. Skipping ahead to nineteen ninety nine, the
Society of Automotive engineers advised drivers to follow the fifteen
second rule. That is, they said a driver can be
distracted by an InCAR activity such as talking to passengers
or retrieving an item from the glove compartment four up
(01:28):
to fifteen seconds before the task becomes a visual distraction
and thus becomes unsafe. But if you're zipping along it's
say fifty five miles an hour, that's about eighty kilometers
per hour. Your car travels about the length of a
football field every five seconds. That's about three hundred and
sixty feet or one hundred and five meters, so you
cover three times that in fifteen seconds. Today, both the
(01:53):
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the US Department of
Transportation recommend that no InCAR activity take more than two
seconds less to become a dangerous distraction. At the same time,
would be surprised if a present day car rolled off
the assembly line without at least a radio installed. Most
new models have sleek digital audio systems. Today, two car
(02:16):
audio systems are considered to be among the low level distractions,
along with eating and drinking that combined are responsible for
distracting us about a third of the time that we
spend behind the wheel. That's not great, but activities like
texting while driving are even more serious because that distracts
you visually, physically, and cognitively all at the same time.
(02:40):
And further research has found that listening to music may
actually help drivers stay focused on the road during certain circumstances,
like long trips on monotonous highways, although handling a media
player or touching the audio controls was found to be distracting.
So why then, do we so often turned down the
(03:00):
volume of the radio when we really need to concentrate
on driving, as say, when it comes to look for
an upcoming exit sign during heavy traffic, or when we're
approaching an unfamiliar destination. It has to do with the
demands on our ability to concentrate and the limitations of
the human brain. As it turns out, turning down the
radio to concentrate isn't strange at all. It's your brain's
(03:23):
natural reaction to the circumstances. The human brain has three parts. First,
there's a cerebrum, the largest part of the brain and
the part that controls your higher cognitive functions such as
language and emotions. Then there's the cerebellum, which controls your
muscle movements and balance. Finally, there's the brain stem, which
controls all of the body's automatic functions such as breathing,
(03:46):
as well as acting as the relay station between the
spinal cord and the cerebrum and cerebellum. As you go
through your day, you collect information about your environment through
your five primary sensory systems taste, hearing, smell, touch, and vision.
Each sensory system has its own sensory neurons and they
(04:07):
send reports to your central nervous system that is, your
spinal cord and brain about changes in your environment. The
brain combines all of this information and decides how to proceed.
That process is called encoding. The brain is constantly evaluating
what its primary task should be, the chief task that
the brain will focus on, and what its secondary task
(04:29):
or tasks should be, which are the concurrent tasks that
get less focus. The brain's ability to switch back and
forth between tasks is called attention switching, and it comes
with a price. When the brain switches its focus and
attention from one task to another, it's fast, but not instantaneous.
Those fractions of a second spent toggling may slow down
(04:51):
your performance, including minor delays in your reaction times, and
when you're lost, that could mean the difference between seeing
or seeing the street sign that you need. People often
turn down the radio when driving in crowded urban areas,
looking for a specific address, or driving in dangerous conditions
like torrential rain or during a snowstorm because those activities
(05:15):
require more concentration than your typical drive. Turning the radio
down or off eliminates a task from the brains to
do list, shifting its focus to the most important task,
finding the way and getting there safely. Research shows that
at work, eleven percent of us right our to do
lists during meetings, and more than half of us check
(05:35):
email while we're on a phone call. Many of us
like to think of ourselves as expert multitaskers, and we
consider it the norm to perform two or more tasks
at the same time, or different tasks quickly back to back,
or to switch rapidly between two tasks. But despite our
pride in and fondness of multitasking, the brain isn't actually
(05:56):
built to multitask. Of course, every brain is different, but
speaking generally, give the brain one task and it's no problem.
Two tasks and the brain divides and conquers them more
than two tasks, though, and things change. With divided focus
and attention, the brain begins to perform less effectively and
is prone to making more errors. The human brain, it
(06:20):
turns out, doesn't have infinite resources, and it handles tasks sequentially.
Yet it's able to switch from task to tasks so
rapidly that we think we're multitasking. And because we have
a limited capacity when it comes to focus and attention,
especially when we're concentrating hard, the brain has to choose
what information gets processed and encoded. For example, your brain
(06:43):
can handle either visual driving related tasks like looking for
an address or rocking out to the radio. When we
try to multitask, each goal competes for the brains available resources.
A multitasking creates a traffic jam, and in the end,
we form poorly on each task. As a result, we
overlook important information, we make errors, and we end up
(07:06):
remembering less information overall. When the brain is forced to
switch rapidly from task to task, it doesn't perform as
well as it does when it can focus on one
thing at a time. Multitasking increases our error rate by
as much as fifty percent and it doesn't speed things
up either. Trying to multitask doubles the amount of time
that it takes to perform each of the tasks at hand.
(07:30):
When you introduce a third task, the brain's prefrontal cortex,
which makes executive decisions, will discard the one it considers
the least important. It's got to do with the limits
of our sensory system, we tune out what our brain
determines to be of lesser importance. When we're lost, or
when we have to perform a driving task that we
don't do very often, like parallel parking, we edit our environment.
(07:54):
We stop listening to passenger conversation, our field of vision shrinks,
we turn down the radios of volume or turn it off,
all in an effort to throw our focus into vision
or spatial relationships, respectively. And that's great. When you're driving,
all your attention should be focused on the road. In
other environments, scientists suggest taking control of our focus and
(08:17):
attention consciously beginning and ending one task at a time.
This is called set shifting, a practice that's been shown
to result in fewer errors than multitasking. Other research suggests
devoting twenty minutes to one goal at a time before
consciously switching to the next. Today's episode is based on
(08:40):
the article why do we turn down the radio when
We're lost? On howtofworks dot com, written by Maria Tree Marquis.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership withhowstuffworks dot com,
and it is produced by Tyler klain A. Four more
podcasts from my Heartradio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
In the nineteen thirties, there was a bit of a
war over radios in cars. All legislators argued that car
radios were distracting and hazardous. The Radio Manufacturers Association countered
(00:22):
that passengers were more of a driver distraction than a
car radio. Listening to the radio, they claimed was safer
than even looking in the rearview mirror. But Illinois, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, and Ohio legislatures all considered implementing
car radio fines, and in nineteen thirty five, Connecticut legislators
actually did introduce a bill that would have placed a
(00:44):
steep fine on radio installation of fifty dollars in nineteen
thirty five, which is over a thousand today. Others considered
making car radio installation a crime. It wasn't until nineteen
thirty nine, though, that anyone actually study weather a correlation
between car radios and car crashes existed. The Princeton Radio
(01:06):
Research Project determined that car radios played little no role
in car accidents. Skipping ahead to nineteen ninety nine, the
Society of Automotive engineers advised drivers to follow the fifteen
second rule. That is, they said a driver can be
distracted by an InCAR activity such as talking to passengers
or retrieving an item from the glove compartment four up
(01:28):
to fifteen seconds before the task becomes a visual distraction
and thus becomes unsafe. But if you're zipping along it's
say fifty five miles an hour, that's about eighty kilometers
per hour. Your car travels about the length of a
football field every five seconds. That's about three hundred and
sixty feet or one hundred and five meters, so you
cover three times that in fifteen seconds. Today, both the
(01:53):
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the US Department of
Transportation recommend that no InCAR activity take more than two
seconds less to become a dangerous distraction. At the same time,
would be surprised if a present day car rolled off
the assembly line without at least a radio installed. Most
new models have sleek digital audio systems. Today, two car
(02:16):
audio systems are considered to be among the low level distractions,
along with eating and drinking that combined are responsible for
distracting us about a third of the time that we
spend behind the wheel. That's not great, but activities like
texting while driving are even more serious because that distracts
you visually, physically, and cognitively all at the same time.
(02:40):
And further research has found that listening to music may
actually help drivers stay focused on the road during certain circumstances,
like long trips on monotonous highways, although handling a media
player or touching the audio controls was found to be distracting.
So why then, do we so often turned down the
(03:00):
volume of the radio when we really need to concentrate
on driving, as say, when it comes to look for
an upcoming exit sign during heavy traffic, or when we're
approaching an unfamiliar destination. It has to do with the
demands on our ability to concentrate and the limitations of
the human brain. As it turns out, turning down the
radio to concentrate isn't strange at all. It's your brain's
(03:23):
natural reaction to the circumstances. The human brain has three parts. First,
there's a cerebrum, the largest part of the brain and
the part that controls your higher cognitive functions such as
language and emotions. Then there's the cerebellum, which controls your
muscle movements and balance. Finally, there's the brain stem, which
controls all of the body's automatic functions such as breathing,
(03:46):
as well as acting as the relay station between the
spinal cord and the cerebrum and cerebellum. As you go
through your day, you collect information about your environment through
your five primary sensory systems taste, hearing, smell, touch, and vision.
Each sensory system has its own sensory neurons and they
(04:07):
send reports to your central nervous system that is, your
spinal cord and brain about changes in your environment. The
brain combines all of this information and decides how to proceed.
That process is called encoding. The brain is constantly evaluating
what its primary task should be, the chief task that
the brain will focus on, and what its secondary task
(04:29):
or tasks should be, which are the concurrent tasks that
get less focus. The brain's ability to switch back and
forth between tasks is called attention switching, and it comes
with a price. When the brain switches its focus and
attention from one task to another, it's fast, but not instantaneous.
Those fractions of a second spent toggling may slow down
(04:51):
your performance, including minor delays in your reaction times, and
when you're lost, that could mean the difference between seeing
or seeing the street sign that you need. People often
turn down the radio when driving in crowded urban areas,
looking for a specific address, or driving in dangerous conditions
like torrential rain or during a snowstorm because those activities
(05:15):
require more concentration than your typical drive. Turning the radio
down or off eliminates a task from the brains to
do list, shifting its focus to the most important task,
finding the way and getting there safely. Research shows that
at work, eleven percent of us right our to do
lists during meetings, and more than half of us check
(05:35):
email while we're on a phone call. Many of us
like to think of ourselves as expert multitaskers, and we
consider it the norm to perform two or more tasks
at the same time, or different tasks quickly back to back,
or to switch rapidly between two tasks. But despite our
pride in and fondness of multitasking, the brain isn't actually
(05:56):
built to multitask. Of course, every brain is different, but
speaking generally, give the brain one task and it's no problem.
Two tasks and the brain divides and conquers them more
than two tasks, though, and things change. With divided focus
and attention, the brain begins to perform less effectively and
is prone to making more errors. The human brain, it
(06:20):
turns out, doesn't have infinite resources, and it handles tasks sequentially.
Yet it's able to switch from task to tasks so
rapidly that we think we're multitasking. And because we have
a limited capacity when it comes to focus and attention,
especially when we're concentrating hard, the brain has to choose
what information gets processed and encoded. For example, your brain
(06:43):
can handle either visual driving related tasks like looking for
an address or rocking out to the radio. When we
try to multitask, each goal competes for the brains available resources.
A multitasking creates a traffic jam, and in the end,
we form poorly on each task. As a result, we
overlook important information, we make errors, and we end up
(07:06):
remembering less information overall. When the brain is forced to
switch rapidly from task to task, it doesn't perform as
well as it does when it can focus on one
thing at a time. Multitasking increases our error rate by
as much as fifty percent and it doesn't speed things
up either. Trying to multitask doubles the amount of time
that it takes to perform each of the tasks at hand.
(07:30):
When you introduce a third task, the brain's prefrontal cortex,
which makes executive decisions, will discard the one it considers
the least important. It's got to do with the limits
of our sensory system, we tune out what our brain
determines to be of lesser importance. When we're lost, or
when we have to perform a driving task that we
don't do very often, like parallel parking, we edit our environment.
(07:54):
We stop listening to passenger conversation, our field of vision shrinks,
we turn down the radios of volume or turn it off,
all in an effort to throw our focus into vision
or spatial relationships, respectively. And that's great. When you're driving,
all your attention should be focused on the road. In
other environments, scientists suggest taking control of our focus and
(08:17):
attention consciously beginning and ending one task at a time.
This is called set shifting, a practice that's been shown
to result in fewer errors than multitasking. Other research suggests
devoting twenty minutes to one goal at a time before
consciously switching to the next. Today's episode is based on
(08:40):
the article why do we turn down the radio when
We're lost? On howtofworks dot com, written by Maria Tree Marquis.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio and partnership withhowstuffworks dot com,
and it is produced by Tyler klain A. Four more
podcasts from my Heartradio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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