I lecture at the Avans University of Applied Sciences in Breda, the Netherlands. Since my students follow the bachelor programme “communication and multimedia design”, I tended to approve that students (18+) used their laptops during my speech. I knew, however, that they were using msn and other communication means. I used to test their ability of multitasking by questioning them about what I was telling just before. I’ve come to the conclusion that their multitasking abilities are very poor, although they believed to be very succesful multitaskers.

On the other hand: when I’m under the impression that my 7 year old daughter hasn’t heared my explanation on why I don’t want her to do X and I check, she always perfectly repeats the full sentence…..
Maybe the early “digital natives” are not yet fully operational multitaskers, but they certainly are getting better!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30pennebaker.html

It sites a study published in the August 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As a “business guy”, I have been struck with the number of communication technologies that each information worker must cope with minute-to-minute in their job. Of course the basics … phone and email. Many companies now include chat applications as part of the core desktop. Add mobile-phone based interactions (and the immediately interrupting “walkie-talkie” style communicators).

The core question are the social / cultural expectations, and how a company (or any organization) establishes norms of behavior. Should every phone call be answered? If not, must every voice-mail message be returned? Does each email require a response? To: vs. CC:? Aliases or groups? Under what circumstances may I ignore a specific medium? It’s all about the norms.

Good Luck!