It is not very hard for a normal human being to perform separate complex tasks, but it is extremely difficult to perform the same tasks when two other individuals are talking at the same time to us. This happens because our frequencies become jammed, overcrowded and cannot allow us to concentrate on multiple tasks at once.


These findings of a recent study conducted by researchers at the Cornell University prove that it is easy for an individual to drive, listen to the song playing at the car radio and also paying attention to the changing traffic conditions.


But such multitasking becomes extremely hard to cope with when two other persons, let's say two passengers in your car speak to you at the same time. This is when you have to orientate your attention from the traffic, driving and radio music to what both of them talk about - considering they talk about two different matters.


Let's take another example: one has to do his homework for school, but he gets bored, and switches on the radio to listen to some music while solving math problems. It is very easy for the person to do both the actions without any errors or inconvenience. But if his parents storm into the room and start talking about different things, the pupil or student will no longer be able to concentrate upon his homework and the music on the radio. Besides this, the pupil or student cannot focus on what both of their parents are saying to him - he can only pay attention and fully understand what only one of them says.


Morten Christiansen, Associate Professor of Psychology and co-author of the study explained that individuals learn "sequential structure from multiple sources at the same time, as long as the sensory characteristics of the sources do not overlap."

The conclusion of the Cornell scientists was that people manage to cope with perceptual multitasking easily. But they fail to manage the situation and concentrate on all the tasks when the sources of the incoming, multiple stimuli are of the same type - like when two different persons talk to someone.


The other author of the study, Christopher Conway, a National Institutes of Health research fellow at Indiana University concluded that the results of the research "show that humans have a powerful learning system that is capable of learning sequential patterns simultaneously from multiple environmental sources - provided each source is perceived as being distinct."