As the wonderfully evolved beings that we are, we can do and concentrate on all kinds of things at once. We can write a text message while driving (I didn't say we always do them legally!), read a book while watching TV, listen to music while reading a book AND watching TV, or check our facebook, email and bank account, while reading a book AND watching TV AND listening to music. Sounds exhausting, but it's all very possible.

Having grown up in such an information-dense world, we are completely used to splitting our attention between multiple tasks or medias, or, multi-tasking.

Interesting fact: the term 'multi-tasking' originally related to computers, or more specifically, handling multiple processing jobs simultaneously.

According to Cathlena Martin (2004, p.1), "children learn to process and make sense of multiple narratives from a very early age." Film and television (particularly sitcoms), have "capitalised on the up-tempo, multi-faceted" aspects of our lives by having multiple subplots and narratives that intertwine. Even the children's show Sesame Street is multi-layered and jumps between different activities and locations.

Children must learn how to multi-task, so they can learn to "integrate and process multiple narratives." (Martin 2004, p.2)