Clifford I. Nass, a Stanford University communication professor who studied human interaction with technology and challenged the idea that people can multitask effectively, died on Saturday.
Mr. Nass, 55, was at the Stanford Sierra Camp, near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., for the fall faculty and staff weekend at the time of his death, according to an announcement on the university’s website. He collapsed following a hike, a university official said. The cause of death is unknown.
Mr. Nass had been at Stanford since 1986. He studied the social nature of people’s interactions with technology and, later, the effects of digital multitasking on productivity and social and emotional development.
In 2009, Mr. Nass and two colleagues published a study concluding that people presented with multiple streams of information simultaneously are unable to pay attention or move from one task to another as well as those who executed a single job at a time.