In a recent study published in the April Issue of Biological psychology, researchers at UT Austin and Yale University were able to replicate schizophrenic like symptoms in a neural network by hampering its ability to forget.  This research reinforces a hypothesis that schizophrenia can result when people lose the ability to forget unimportant information.  The neural network, which was designed to process natural language, responded to questions in a way that was very similar to how a schizophrenic might be expected to respond. From the article:

DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall. In one answer, for instance, DISCERN claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing.In another instance, DISCERN began showing evidence of “derailment”-replying to requests for a specific memory with a jumble of dissociated sentences, abrupt digressions and constant leaps from the first- to the third-person and back again.

What’s striking is that a neural network is giving useful information about how the human mind might be functioning.  It is not hard to imagine how even an imperfect computer based model of the human mind, that only replicates partial aspects, could benefit research on mental illness.  One of the struggles of psychology is that you can only ever guess what is happening inside the brain.  The closest researchers can get to seeing what happens in the mind is through fMRI.  On the other hand, if a neural network can replicate a mental illness, then experimental parameters could be adjusted in ways that would be impossible with human test subjects.  Theoretically, key factors could be isolated through repeated experimentation without concern for harming the test subject.  Intentionally inducing schizophrenia in a healthy human is abhorrent, intentionally inducing schizophrenia in a computer is good science.   

More on Multitasking

         PBS Frontline did an excellent piece on multitasking in their episode “Digital Nation” about the effects of the wired society on people.  It clearly shows the gap between what people think is going on with multitasking and what actually happens.  

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

The Fallacy of Multitasking

A recent study on multiasking in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking reminded me of a subject I have long meant to write about: the fallacy of multitasking.  Multitasking is a great myth.  It would be wonderful to do two tasks at once, but that is not how our brains are wired.  This doesn't stop people from pretending that multitasking is a skill or ability.  Students often claim that they are capable of surfing the internet while paying attention in class.  Job postings often list multitasking as a preferred skill.

At best, our brains work like an old windows computer.  Computers claimed to be able to multitask, long before they actually could. That was the claim to fame for windows 3.1, it supposedly enabled users to do two tasks at once.  Except it didn’t work; computer processors can only do one task at a time.  Advances in computer multitasking have been advances in processing power, memory and software, enabling the computer to switch faster between more tasks.  The only way to truly get tasks to run in parallel is to add more processors.

It turns out that the human mind works in much the same way.  The study looked at how often people would switch attention between multimedia devices while using two at the same time.  For instance, while using a computer and watching television, users claimed to switch attention 15 times during the space of a few commercials.  In fact the actual amount was 10 times that.  The users were operating in a highly distracted state.

Like computers, people who are better at multitasking, who are able to perform better than others when trying to do two tasks simultaneously, have a higher working memory.  These people can remember more information at once. However, even “high” performance at multitasking is much lower than focused performance. 


There is a place for multitasking, but is not in the classroom, and probably not in the workplace.  People can only effectively multi-task when performance requirements are low or unimportant, like whistling while walking or eating while watching television. The idea that someone could do more than one task at a time effectively, remains a myth.