Overview
- Researchers from Halle‑Wittenberg, Hagen and Medical School Hamburg report that even after training, the brain handles dual tasks sequentially rather than simultaneously.
- Across three experiments with 25 participants, practice reduced reaction times and errors only when the routine stayed exactly the same.
- Small alterations to task timing or sequence eliminated the improvement, restoring slower responses and higher error rates.
- The dual‑task paradigm combined a visual judgment of circle size with concurrent tone classification as high, medium or low.
- The authors warn that such fragile gains and rising fatigue have real‑world implications for safety‑critical activities like driving or jobs requiring parallel task management.