In this blog post, I’m going to describe a very simple yet powerful demonstration of task switching costs. This is a demonstration that students can take part in alone, in pairs, in groups of three, or as a class with one student volunteering to be the “case study” that the rest of the class observes. In this demonstration, students are invited to time themselves performing two separate tasks, and then attempting to switch back and forth between the two tasks.

The Demonstration

The demonstration involves doing three very short tasks:

Task 1 is counting up from 1 to 26.

Task 2 is reciting the alphabet from A to Z.

Task 3 is interleaving numbers with letters, 1-A-2-B-3-C etc. – that is, switching back and forth between Tasks 1 and 2.

Yep, that’s it!

Independent Activity

If you want students to do it on their own – or you, the reader, want to try it out for yourself – they can simply do each of the three tasks, and time themselves completing each one. Try it right now – before you read the rest of the post!