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New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thin

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问题     New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing at a time. Whether people toggle between browsing the Web and using other computer programs, talk on cell phones while driving, pilot jumbo jets or monitor air traffic, they’re using their "executive control" processes—the mental CEO—found to be associated with the brain’s key neural regions. These interrelated cognitive processes establish priorities among tasks and allocate the mind’s resources to them. " For each aspect of human performance—perceiving, thinking and acting—people have specific mental resources whose effective use requires supervision through executive mental control," says David Meyer, Ph. D. at the University of Michigan.
    To better understand executive control, as well as the human capacity for multitasking and its limitations, Joshua Rubinstein, Ph. D. of U. S. Federal Aviation Administration, and David Meyer, and Jeffrey Evans, Ph. D. at the University of Michigan, studied patterns in the amounts of time lost when people switched repeatedly between two tasks of varying complexity and familiarity. The findings revealed that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took a significantly long time to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs were a lot greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar. They got "up to speed" faster when they switched to tasks they knew better, an observation that may lead to interfaces designed to help overcome people’s innate cognitive limitations.
    The researchers say their results suggest that executive control involves two distinct, complementary stages: goal shifting("I want to do this now instead of that")and rule activation("I’m turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this"). Both stages help people unconsciously switch between tasks. Rule activation itself takes significant amounts of time, several tenths of a second—which can add up when people switch back and forth repeatedly between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem more efficient on the surface, but may actually take more time in the end. According to the researchers, this insight into executive control may help people choose strategies that maximize their efficiency when multitasking. The insight may also weigh against multitasking. For example, Meyer points out, a mere half second of time lost to task switching can mean the difference between life and death for a driver using a cell phone, because during the time that the car is not totally under control, it can travel far enough to crash into obstacles the driver have otherwise avoided.
The function of mental CEO is to
选项 A、associate the activities with the neural regions.
B、help people deal with many tasks at the same time.
C、establish priorities among complicated tasks.
D、supervise the use of specific mental resources.
答案D
解析 大脑首席执行官的功能是[A]将活动与神经区域相连。[B]帮助人们同时处理多种任务。[C]对复杂的任务进行优先排序。[D]监督特定脑部资源的使用。文章第一段将“执行控制”程序比喻成大脑的首席执行官。最后一句指出，特定精神资源的有效运用需要执行精神控制的监督，所以本题的正确答案为[D]。选项[C]不全面，“执行控制”除了将任务进行排序外，还将脑部资源分配给它们。
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