Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-ff9ft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-06T07:52:09.743Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liminality in multitasking: Where talk and task collide in computer collaborations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2012

Mike Levy  and
Rod Gardner
Mike Levy
Affiliation:
The University of Queensland, School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australiam.levy@uq.edu.au
Rod Gardner
Affiliation:
Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, 176 Messines Ridge Road, Mt. Gravatt, QLD 4122, Australiar.gardner@griffith.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of computer activity on talk during collaboration at the computer by two pairs of high school students during a web-based task. The work is located in relation to research in the wider world of the workplace and informal settings where multitasking involving talk and the operation of artifacts is known to occur. The current study focuses on how, when two students are working at the computer, talk continues or is disrupted during multitasking. Five examples are described in detail, beginning with a relatively straightforward case of serial multitasking and leading up to an example of complex simultaneous multitasking. Overwhelmingly in our data, only routine on-screen actions accompany talk, whereas complex actions occur with hitches or restarts in the talk, and true simultaneous multitasking happens on just three occasions in the data set. (Collaborative activity, computers, Conversation Analysis, interaction, language and technology, multimodality, multitasking)*

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , November 2012 , pp. 557 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arminen, Ilkka; Auvinen, Petra; & Palukka, Hannele (2010). Repairs as the last orderly provided defense of safety in aviation. Journal of Pragmatics 42:443–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, Naomi (2008). Always on: Language in an online and mobile world. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert (2005). Coordinating with each other in a material world. Discourse Studies 7:507–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzubak, Cora (2008). Multitasking: The good, the bad, and the unknown. The Facilitating Newsletter of the Association of Tutoring Profession January 2008.Google Scholar
Esbjörnsson, Mattias; Oskar, Juhlin; & Alexandra, Weilenmann (2007). Drivers using mobile phones in traffic: An ethnographic study of interactional adaptation [Special issue]. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 22(1&2):37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foehr, Ulla (2006). Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors and pairings. Menlo Park, CA: The Kaiser Family Foundation.Google Scholar
Gardner, Rod, & Mike, Levy (2010). The coordination of talk and action in the collaborative construction of a multimodal text. Journal of Pragmatics 42:2189–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1981). Conversational organization. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1995). Seeing in depth. Social Studies of Science 25:237–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32:1489–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (2007). Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse and Society 18(1):53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haddington, Pentti, & Rauniomaa, Mirka (2011). Technologies, multitasking, and driving: Attending to and preparing for a mobile phone conversation in a car. Human Communication Research 37:223–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Christian, & Luff, Paul (1996). Convergent activities: Line control and passenger information on the London Underground. In Engeström, Yrjö & Middleton, David (eds.), Cognition and communication at work, 96–129. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchins, Edwin (1990). The technology of team navigation. In Jolene Galegher, Robert Kraut, & Egido, Carmen (eds.), Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of cooperative work, 191–220. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hutchins, Edwin, & Tove, Klausen (1998). Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Engeström & Middleton, 15–34.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society 2:181–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Just, Marcel; Carpenter, Patricia; Keller, Timothy; Emery, Lisa; Zajac, Holly; & Thulborn, Keith (2001). Interdependence of nonoverlapping cortical systems in dual cognitive tasks. NeuroImage 14:417–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keating, Elizabeth, & Sunakawa, Chiho (2010). Participation cues: Coordinating activity and collaboration in complex online gaming worlds. Language in Society 39:331–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenyon, Susan (2008). Internet use and time use: The importance of multitasking. Time & Society 17:283–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenhart, Amanda; Rainie, Lee; & Lewis, Oliver (2001). Teenage life online: The rise of the instant message generation and the internet's impact on friendships and family relationships. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.Google Scholar
Lenhart, Amanda; Rainie, Lee; Lewis, Oliver; Madden, Mary; & Hitlin, Paul (2005). Teens and technology: Youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.Google Scholar
Levy, Jonathan, & Pashler, Harold (2008). Task prioritisation in multitasking during driving: Opportunity to abort a concurrent task does not insulate braking responses from dual-task slowing. Applied Cognitive Psychology 22:507–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevile, Maurice (2002). Coordinating talk and non-talk activity in the airline cockpit. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 25:131–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pashler, Harold (1992). Attentional limitations in doing two tasks at the same time. Current Directions in Psychological Science 1:44–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel (1988/89). From interview to confrontation: Observations of the Bush/Rather encounter. Research on Language and Social Interaction 22:215–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel; Jefferson, Gail; & Sacks, Harvey (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53:361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sohn, Myeong-Ho, & Anderson, John (2001). Task preparation and task repetition: Two-component model of task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130:764–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Suchman, Lucy (1996). Constituting shared workspaces. In Engeström & Middleton, 35–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, Claudia (2006). The multitasking generation: They are e-mailing, IMing and downloading while writing the history essay. What is all that digital juggling doing to kids brains and their family life? Time 167:48–55.Google Scholar
Wood, Jacqueline, & Grafman, Jordan (2003). Human prefrontal cortex: Processing and representational perspectives. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4:139–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed