WHY TEENAGERS IGNORE PARENTS WHILE WATCHING TELEVISION.

Parents who are frustrated that their teenager does not listen to them while watching television should take heart. A new study suggests that people cannot multitask effectively before adulthood. Researchers compared two groups of female volunteers, one group aged 11 to 17 and the other 22 to 30, who had to perform a memory task while being distracted by social interactions. They found although both struggled with the extra mental load of distractions, adults were far better to cope with the tasks than under-19s. Scientists believe that brain functions, which allow people to store overlapping inputs, do not properly develop until adulthood. So, teenagers simply cannot keep as many thoughts in their head as adults.
"Multitasking situations that some adults navigate effectively might be too difficult for some adolescents", said lead author Kathryn Mills. "For example, in-class group work might be particularly difficult for adolescents who are already struggling with the assignment topic"., he said. The study involved asking the participants to remember a two or three digit number before an elaborate social interaction task that involved moving objects between slots in a set of four-by-four shelves. Objects and their destinations were chosen according to the viewpoint of a 'director' positioned either behind or in front of the shelves, or whether the director was male or female. Afterwards, volunteers had to recall the numbers they had memorised before the distraction task.
The researchers concluded: "Overall, adolescents were less adept at multitasking than adults when under high cognitive load. These results suggest that multi-tasking during social interactions incurs performance deficits, and that adolescents are more sensitive than adults to the effects of cognitive load while multi-tasking". So, don't blame your kids for ignoring your next time.
-Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy-
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