Practice makes perfect - Multiboxing "retrains" the brain.

[Xzin]

From: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0907...tml?s=news_rss

Researchers in the United States have pinpointed the region of the brain that limits our ability to carry out more than one task at the same time — and have shown how, with training, the brain gets better at multitasking.

"Our brain is lousy at handling multitasking situations," says neuroscientist René Marois of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who led the work together with Paul Dux, a cognitive scientist who is now at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Even if the tasks are very simple, such as walking and chewing gum, "as soon as either needs concentration, we can't do them both without our performance suffering", says Marois.

When we try to pay attention to multiple stimuli — a red traffic light and an SMS alert on a mobile phone, for example — the stream of information flowing from sensation to action gets clogged up. Using a suite of neuroimaging and analysis techniques, Marois, Dux and their colleagues identified a region of the brain that holds up multitasking, and discovered that training gives this region a speed boost.

Has anybody found that they box better with practice?

[rahven32]

I would hope so =) When I first started I pretty much sucked lol. If we didnt get better I'm sure alot would quit pretty fast. Even with programs like HKN, keyclone, etc. it's still alot to process.

[Ogloo]

it is a lot of info to process... god our brains are cool lol

but yeah ive gotten better at doing that, including managing time at school and stuff.. hummmmmm

maybe its helping my brain.. but the computer playing is also destroying the brain so tradeoff

[Gomotron]

Multitasking vs. focusing on a single task is always a delicate balance.

Push too far towards the multitasking and you get people with severe ADD.

Push too far towards singular focus and you get autism.

It is a delicate balance not to go too far in either direction, although there are times when a singular focus is actually highly useful (i.e. a surgeon during a complex procedure). I am of the opinion that the ability to handle multiple tasks with a minimum of loss of efficiency is as variable as other personal traits (intelligence, creativity, etc.) although with training I think that anyone can become more proficient at handling multiple tasks.

[Flekkie]

With no scientific basis at all, I suspect that I get better at this as much by 'muscle memory' as by actually thinking about several things at once in my head.

By this I mean:
After I have practiced how to react given a certain combination of circumstances, I can do much better if the same combination happens again. But throw a new combination at me, and I have to learn some of it again (eg new classes / different boss etc).

But then I am a bloke, and I hear we are (supposedly) challenged in the multi-task area ^^

Perhaps set-up is a factor? The 'mash one button' setups probably minimise the multitasking need, as do the 'all one class' setups.
Because of my PvE mash one button setup (may change later when I get better at this), I probably actually multitask more at work than when multiboxing!


In terms of responding to stimuli.. well, I was a healer in all the vanilla 40-man raids, if that isn't responding to multiple stimuli simultaneously then what is? :P
So maybe that is why I didn't have a problem with 5 clients, because I was already trained up.


Oh and.. LOL.. Quoted For Truth:

maybe its helping my brain.. but the computer playing is also destroying the brain so tradeoff

[5fingersofdoom]

Yes definately i've gotten better,but I also found playing 1 char in PvP helps balance things out.
I'm in agreement with what Gomotron said.
Always balance things out

[Lash]

Interesting...at work I always have to jump between projects (usually only one or two are the main ones, but there is always some kind of filler work to be done it seems). It took me quite a while to get use to it and I had to force a bit of email organization on myself to avoid spending time on what needed to be done and to quickly grab things out of the "queue". Still improvements can be made...

I played a shaman for most of my early wow life. When I turned to multiboxing shaman was still the major building block for teams. I didn't want to just play multiples of the same char I had been playing. I decided to try a dk and reuse the existing shaman. It worked rather well when I tried combining tanking and healing. I decided to start over and have a paladin, priest, and mage that are just now getting past 60. It feels more complete than the previous setup despite having more to do. I found by having "zones" of keys where the left and right hand do different group roles (tanking/damage versus healing) works well. Perhaps this is more planning and muscle memory than getting better at multiboxing though...

There are times when I simply get overwhelmed, but I allow myself some time to go over the event and try to improve on it for the next time. I'm still at the point that I spend more time planning and thinking about how to play multi characters than actually playing...lol. For me that is actually one of the main fun factors of doing this.

[Acerak]

There are times when I simply get overwhelmed, but I allow myself some time to go over the event and try to improve on it for the next time. I'm still at the point that I spend more time planning and thinking about how to play multi characters than actually playing...lol. For me that is actually one of the main fun factors of doing this.

Funny you should say this...I realized the other day that the part of the game I enjoy/spend the most time on is the meta-game -- that is, planning teams, figuring most efficient ways to play them, etc. I think I most enjoy fiddling with my "5Box Wow Planning" spreadsheet. :whistling:

I'm sick, I know.

To the OP: Definitely. I still flail with my 4 melee guys, but I'm getting better. It seems no matter how I have things setup there's always some slave wandering off trying to kill critters or sleep under trees.

Boxing requires discipline....sometimes you have to use a sharp switch to keep your guys in line!!

[EaTCarbS]

Has anybody found that they box better with practice?

oh god, yes :thumbsup:

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Reminds me of those "studies" that say nobody can effectively use dual monitors for more than one thing at a time in a productivity setting. Idiots.