The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory

by Julia Shaw

The basic human assumption that we can adeptly multitask is the result of a fundamental underappreciation of how memory and attention actually work. As neuroscientist Earl Miller from MIT puts it, ‘People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves … The brain is very good at deluding itself.’1 Miller suggests that the better word to use in the sorts of situations that we like to think of as involving multitasking is task-switching: ‘When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost.’ So while we may feel like we are getting things done quicker, instead we are just overloading our brains.