Your Brain's Struggle With Listening And Reading Together:
The Multitasking Myth: Most people believe they can effectively listen to someone speak while reading text at the same time. Research shows this assumption is incorrect because both activities compete for the same mental resources in your brain. When you attempt to process spoken words and written text simultaneously, your comprehension suffers in both areas, though you might not immediately notice the decline. Your brain processes language through specific neural pathways regardless of whether information enters through your ears or eyes. These pathways cannot fully handle two streams of linguistic information at once. Instead, your attention rapidly switches between listening and reading, creating the illusion of simultaneous processing while actually reducing your understanding of both.