"I've got eyes in the back of my head!"

 

The funny thing is, from a psychological point of view, there's actually something interesting going on.

Your Nan probably wasn't truly multitasking in the sense of giving equal attention to everything at once. Research suggests that people usually switch their attention rapidly between tasks, especially if at least one of them has become very familiar through practice.

For example, if your Nan had been knitting for years, she may have needed very little conscious attention to do it. That left more attention available for:

• Listening to the television.
• Thinking about the crossword.
• Keeping an ear on what you were doing!

So when you started being mischievous, her attention was immediately drawn to it.

This links beautifully with your psychology course.

You have already come across:

• Attention
• Bottom-up attention
• Top-down attention
• Perception
• Sensory processing

Your Nan's story introduces another topic:

Divided Attention

This is when we try to pay attention to more than one thing.

Sometimes we can do it quite well.

Sometimes we can't.

For example:

✅ Walking and chatting.

✅ Knitting while watching television (if you've knitted for years).

❌ Two people asking you different questions at exactly the same time.

❌ Reading a difficult book while someone is talking to you.

Most people find the second example much harder.

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This also links to disability.

Different people process information differently.

For example:

• Some people are comfortable with several conversations happening around them.
• Others may find it difficult to know which voice to listen to.
• Some people can ignore background noise easily.
• Others find every sound equally noticeable.

That doesn't necessarily mean one person is "better" than another—it means their brains are processing information differently.

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I think you've just stumbled across another teaching activity.

Can You Really Multitask?

Give students a series of small tasks.

For example:

Round 1

Read a short paragraph quietly.

Easy.

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Round 2

Read the paragraph while someone asks simple questions.

Harder.

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Round 3

Read the paragraph while:

• music is playing,
• someone else is talking,
• another person walks around the room.

Then ask:

• What did you remember?
• What distracted you most?
• Which task became hardest?
• Did everyone have the same experience?

This demonstrates that attention is limited and that distractions affect people differently.