Multitasking Debate Reading Answers

Jan 24, 2023

Multitasking debate reading answers contain 13 questions that need to be answered in 20 minutes. Multitasking debate reading answers contain three types of questions including writing the correct letter, choosing the correct option and Yes, No, and Not Given. This IELTS reading passage has been taken from the book IELTS - The Complete Guide to General Reading. Candidates can find similar topics like Multitasking debate reading answers from IELTS Reading Practice Papers.

Candidates must read the IELTS reading passage, identify keywords, and recognize synonyms to answer the question. In the IELTS Reading Section, the candidates are presented with different question styles with specific instructions. It is important that candidates abide by the word limit as well as answer accurately for what is asked.

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Section 1

Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions

Multitasking Debate IELTS Reading Sample

Can you do them at the same time?

Talking on the phone while driving isn’t the only situation where we’re worse at multitasking than we might like to think we are. New studies have identified a bottleneck in our brains that some say means we are fundamentally incapable of true multitasking. If experimental findings reflect real-world performance, people who think they are multitasking are probably just underperforming in all – or at best, all but one – of their parallel pursuits. Practice might improve your performance, but you will never be as good as when focusing on one task at a time.

The problem, according to René Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is that there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this, Marois devised an experiment to locate it. Volunteers watch a screen and when a particular image appears, a red circle, say, they have to press a key with their index finger. Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers. Typical response time is about half a second, and the volunteers quickly reach their peak performance. Then they learn to listen to different recordings and respond by making a specific sound. For instance, when they hear a bird chirp, they have to say “ba”; an electronic sound should elicit a “ko”, and so on. Again, no problem. A normal person can do that in about half a second, with almost no effort.

The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, and then almost immediately plays them a sound. Now they’re flummoxed. “If you show an image and play a sound at the same time, one task is postponed,” he says. In fact, if the second task is introduced within the half-second or so it takes to process and react to the first, it will simply be delayed until the first one is done. The largest dual-task delays occur when the two tasks are presented simultaneously; delays progressively shorten as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.

There are at least three points where we seem to get stuck, says Marois. The first is in simply identifying what we’re looking at. This can take a few tenths of a second, during which time we are not able to see and recognise a second item. This limitation is known as the “attentional blink”: experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of concentration, it may register in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it. Interestingly, if you don’t expect the first event, you have no trouble to respond to the second. What exactly causes the attentional blink is still a matter for debate.

A second limitation is in our short-term visual memory. It’s estimated that we can keep track of about four items at a time, fewer if they are complex. This capacity shortage is thought to explain, in part, our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in scenes that are otherwise identical, so-called “change blindness”. Show people pairs of near-identical photos – say, aircraft engines in one picture have disappeared in the other – and they will fail to spot the differences. Here again, though, there is disagreement about what the essential limiting factor really is. Does it come down to a dearth of storage capacity, or is it about how much attention a viewer is paying?

A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus – braking when you see a child in the road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that she’s thinking of leaving your dad – also takes brainpower. Selecting a response to one of these things will delay by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other. This is called the “response selection bottleneck” theory, first proposed in 1952.

But David Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, doesn’t buy the bottleneck idea. He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used by the brain to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known as something of an optimist by his peers. He has written papers with titles like “Virtually perfect time-sharing in dual-task performance: Uncorking the central cognitive bottleneck”. His experiments have shown that with enough practice – at least 2000 tries – some people can execute two tasks simultaneously as competently as if they were doing them one after the other. He suggests that there is a central cognitive processor that coordinates all this and, what’s more, he thinks it used discretion: sometimes it chooses to delay one task while completing another.

Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects. He has found that with just 1 hour of practice each day for two weeks, volunteers show a huge improvement at managing both his tasks at once. Where he disagrees with Meyer is in what the brain is doing to achieve this. Marois speculates that practice might give us the chance to find less congested circuits to execute a task – rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid heavy traffic on main roads – effectively making our response to the task subconscious. After all, there are plenty of examples of subconscious multitasking that most of us routinely manage: walking and talking, eating and reading, watching TV and folding the laundry.

It probably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse at multitasking as we age. According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, who studies how ageing affects our cognitive abilities, we peak in our 20s. Though the decline is slow through our 30s and on into our 50s, it is there; and after 55, it becomes more precipitous. In one study, he and his colleagues had both young and old participants do a simulated driving task while carrying on a conversation. He found that while young drivers tended to miss background changes, older drivers failed to notice things that were highly relevant. Likewise, older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene than young drivers.

It’s not all bad news for over-55s, though. Kramer also found that older people can benefit from the practice. Not only did they learn to perform better, but brain scans also showed that underlying that improvement was a change in the way their brains become active. While it’s clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age, the basic facts remain sobering. “We have this impression of an almighty complex brain,” says Marois, “and yet we have very humbling and crippling limits.” For most of our history, we probably never needed to do more than one thing at a time, he says, and so we haven’t evolved to be able to. Perhaps we will in future, though. We might yet look back one day on people like Debbie and Alun as ancestors of a new breed of true multitaskers.

Section 2

Solution and Explanation

Questions 28-32

The Reading Passage has ten paragraphs, A-J.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A— J, in boxes 28 — 32 on your answer sheet.

A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction

Answer: F
Supporting sentence: A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus – braking when you see a child in the road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that she’s thinking of leaving your dad – also takes brainpower.
Keywords: reaction, stimulus, response, brainpower, delay
Key Location: Section F, 1st line
Explanation: This is the correct answer because Section F focuses on the third limitation. It states that choosing a response to a stimulus uses brain power. This takes time, which will delay the response of other stimuli by some one-tenth of a second.

Different age groups respond to important things differently.

Answer: I
Supporting sentence: older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene than young drivers.
Keyword: ageing, paying attention, important parts, respond
Key Location: Section I, last line.
Explanation: Section I talks about Art Kramer study which shows how ageing affects our cognitive abilities and in turn multitasking abilities as well. He gives the instance where older people fail to notice important things and younger groups miss background changes. The statement is in sync with the information given in this section.

Conflicts happen when visual and audio elements emerge simultaneously.

Answer: C
Supporting sentence:The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, and then almost immediately plays them a sound. Now they’re flummoxed.
Keyword: visual, audio, simultaneously.
Key Location:Section C, 1st line
Explanation: This is the correct answer because section C talks about the dual task delay. If the second element is presented immediately after the first, then there will be a delay until the first one is completed. Marois carried out an experiment where when you showed an image to the volunteers, right after a sound, they were baffled because of the dual task delay.

An experiment designed to demonstrate the critical part of the brain for multitasking.

Answer: B
Supporting sentence: The problem, according to René Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is that there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this, Marois devised an experiment to locate it.
Keyword: experiment, critical, brain, multitasking
Key Location: Section B, 1st line
Explanation: This is the correct answer because section B mentions Rene Marois. Rene Marois who devised an experiment to demonstrate the sticking point in the brain which causes problems while multitasking.

A viewpoint favors the optimistic side of multitasking performance.

Answer: G
Supporting sentence:He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used by the brain to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known as something of an optimist by his peers.
Keyword:optimistic, multitasking, performance
Key Location: Section G, 2nd line
Explanation: This is the correct answer. Because in Section G, there is mention of Myere’s study who is optimistic about the dual-task interference. As per him with enough practice, the dual-task ability considerably improves and one can perform two tasks simultaneously with equal competence. This is a favourable viewpoint.

Question 33-35:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.

Which one is correct about the experiment conducted by René Marois?

participants performed poorly on the listening task solely
volunteers press a different key on different color
participants need to use different fingers on the different colored object
they did a better fob on Mixed image and sound information

Answer: C
Supporting sentence: Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers.
Keyword: experiment, Rene Marois, participants
Key Location: Section B,4th line
Explanation: This is the correct option. Because the experiment which was conducted by Marois required the volunteers to press a key with a different finger for different coloured objects. For instance when a red circle appears on the screen, the volunteers are required to press the key with their index finger.

Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?

“attentional blink” takes about ten seconds
lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while the second one appears
we always have trouble in reaching the second one
first limitation can be avoided by certain measures

Answer: B
Supporting sentence: experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of concentration, it may register in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it.
Keyword: limitation, experiment, concentration window, lag
Key Location: Section D, 4th line
Explanation: This is the correct option. Because the first limitation is if while watching one event another shows up, then one is unable to act on it as the focus is still on the first one. Therefore lag occurs.

Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?

just after failure in several attempts can people execute dual-task
Practice can overcome dual-task interference
Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois’s theory
an existing processor decides whether to delay another task or not

Answer: A
Supporting sentence: His experiments have shown that with enough practice – at least 2000 tries – some people can execute two tasks simultaneously as competently as if they were doing them one after the other.
Keyword: meyer’s experiment, attempts/practice, dual task
Key Location: Section G, 4th line
Explanation: Meyer believes that with at least 2000 tries which with this much practice an individual can execute 2 tasks simultaneously with equal competence. 2000 attempts are not a few attempts but quite a figure.Hence this statement is not correct about Meyer’s experiments.

Question 36-40:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES- if the statement agrees with the information
NO- if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN- if there is no information on this

The longer gap between two presenting tasks means shorter delay toward the second one.

Answer: Yes
Supporting sentence: delays progressively shortens as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.
Keyword: gap, tasks, delay, second task
Key Location:Section C, last line
Explanation: This is the correct answer. Because it takes time to process and react to one task, if the second task is given almost immediately then it will be delayed until the first one is processed. Therefore if presented simultaneously, the delay is longer, but the bigger the gap between 2 tasks, the lesser the delay.

Incapable of human memory causes people to sometimes miss the differences when presented with two similar images.

Answer: Yes
Supporting sentence: our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in scenes that are otherwise identical, so-called “change blindness”.
Keyword: human memory, detect, differences, inability
Key Location:Section E, 3rd line
Explanation: This is the correct answer. As it is clearly mentioned we have short-term visual memory and cannot keep track of too many items at one go. Therefore when identical images are presented even with a huge change in one, it goes unnoticed.

Marois has a different opinion on the claim that training removes the bottleneck effect.

Answer: No
Supporting sentence: Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects.
Keyword: bottleneck, training, practice, remove
Key Location: Section H, 1st line
Explanation: The statement contradicts the information given in the passage. Because Marois is of the opinion that practice or training can remove the interference effect. It is also known as the “bottleneck” effect and he doesn’t have a different opinion on the claim.

Art Kramer proved there is a correlation between multitasking performance and genders.

Answer: Not Given
Supporting sentence: According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, who studies how ageing affects our cognitive abilities, we peak in our 20s.
Keyword: multitasking, correlation, gender, Art Kramer
Key Location: Section I, 2nd line
Explanation: This is the correct answer because there is no information about any gender-based study made by Kramer. The study of his which is mentioned in the passage shows how ageing affects our cognitive abilities and in turn our multitasking abilities.

The author doesn’t believe that the effect of practice could bring any variation.

Answer: No
Supporting sentence: While it’s clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age, the basic facts remain sobering.
Keyword: practice, variation, author
Key Location: Section J, 4th line
Explanation: This is the correct answer. Because after the multitasking debate, the author does come to believe that practice can reduce the interference effect. And can make an individual better at multitasking though he never took any side. Hence the claim contradicts the information given.

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