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The Zeigarnik Phenomenon Revisited: Implications for Enhancement of Morale
Perceptual and Motor Skills
Abstract
Sumna~y.-Zeigarnik's notion of need tension following task interruption was reexamined by comparing the time estimates of task-interrupted and taskcompleted groups (n = 15 each). Overestimation characterized the former and underestimation the latter group. Tasks with clear endpoints are thought to be associated with high morale. The Lewinian concept of psychological tension as demonstrated by Blurna Zeigarnik's finding more than five decades ago that task interruption tended to enhance recall of its content suggests the possibility that retrospective perception of a given time span following task interruption may be a useful measure of what she called at the time "sustained need tension " (Zeigarnik, 1927). This proposition emerges from selected findings in the literature on time perception. For example, Gulliksen (1927) published data suggesting that passage of time during void intervals (analogous to intervals following task interruption) tended to be overestimated, while filled, active time periods tended to be underestimated. Further, the magnitude of negative time estimates, i.e., underestimation, appeared
... The tasks used in the experiment on interruption did not receive a lot of attention. In the first interruption research, traced back to the 1920s, a list of three-letter anagrams was given to subjects to solve (Weybrew, 1984). While solving the anagrams, the subjects were abruptly asked to estimate the amount of time it took them to solve the first 10 anagrams (an interrupting task). ...
... The study found that the tasks that were interrupted were recalled more often than those that were not interrupted, and that the subjects recalled the interrupted tasks first. It is called the "Zeigarnik effect" (Weybrew, 1984); however, her study did not consider task types and performance, and the overall effects of interruptions were not investigated as well. ...
Interruptions are prevalent phenomena in modern working environments; yet, few interruption studies have been conducted on different types of human tasks. A study using computer-based human behavior tasks was carried out to investigate the effects of interruptions with 4 different primary-interrupting task sets. The tasks used in this study were determined by cognitive and motor skill processes based on human behavior classification theory. The results showed that interruption effects were most negative in cognitive/cognitive task sets, and skill/cognitive task sets showed the least amount of effects in task completion time, F(3, 332) = 77.88, p < .001. In error rate performance, skill/skill task sets showed the highest rate, and error rates for cognitive primary task sets (cognitive/cognitive and cognitive/skill task sets) were not significantly different, F(1, 42) = 41.18, p < .001; F(1, 42) = 3.56, p = 0.0661. Interruption frequency also negatively affected task performance, F(1, 412) = 89.88, p < .001, but skill tasks’ quantitative performance did not show significant effects at different interruption frequencies, F(1, 187) = 3.78, p = .0534. The results showed that interruptions increase more time to complete in cognitive tasks and produce more errors in skill tasks. Also, similar types of primary-interrupting tasks were more susceptible from interruptions. Thus, based on task composition of work process, we can estimate different effects from the interruptions and memory load, and task similarity in primary-interrupting task relationship were considered a main factor.
... This offers a direction to a possible metric for understanding flow. It turns out that there is a psychological principle summarized by Weybrew [21] that says that when interrupted during an activity, people will overestimate the time that activity took. Czerwinski, Horvitz and Cutrell showed how this can be harnessed [8]. ...
... It turns out that there is a psychological principle summarized by Weybrew [21] that says that when interrupted during an activity, people will overestimate the time that activity took. ...
Psychologists have studied "optimal human experience" for many years, often called "being in the flow". Through years of study, the basic characteristics of flow have been identified. This paper reviews the literature, and interprets the characteristics of flow within the context of interface design with the goal of understanding what kinds of interfaces are most conducive to supporting users being in the flow. Several examples to demonstrate the connection to flow are given.
... One of the earliest uses of time estimation in psychological experiments can be traced back to a phenomenon subsequently termed the Ziegarnik effect. Ziegarnik [6] ran a large set of studies wherein participants were given different tasks to perform. Prior to completing some of these tasks, participants were instructed to terminate working on that task and to switch to something else. ...
... Overall Average: something akin to the modified Ziegarnik effect described by Weybrew (1984). In addition, participants do not necessarily know ahead of time which direction the experimenter expects the time estimates to go, and hence may not "bias" their reported estimates toward the positive end of the scale, as so often happens during lab studies using satisfaction measures in questionnaires [3]. ...
This paper explores a new approach to gauging users' difficulties with tasks, interfaces, and situations we refer to as subjective duration assessment. The approach, adapted from results described in the interruption literature in psychology, centers on the use of time estimation to characterize performance. We introduce a metric, named relative subjective duration (RSD) that provides a means for probing the difficulty that users have with performing tasks—without directly asking users about the difficulty We do this in order to avoid the inherent bias toward the positive end of the scale typically seen in user satisfaction ratings after usability studies. It has been shown previously that when engaging tasks are interrupted, participants tend to overestimate how long those tasks take when compared to actual task times. Conversely, tasks that are completed tend to be underestimated in terms of the overall task times. We have explored the value of time estimation as a metric for evaluating task performance in HCI. Our hypothesis was that the duration of activity on tasks that are halted before completion would be overestimated, because participants were not able to complete them on their own, while the duration of activity on tasks completed successfully would be underestimated. A user study of a well-known Internet browser explored the efficacy of the metric. Our results show that within deployment constraints, RSD can be a valuable tool for HCI research.
... Luo et al. showed that high level of Temporal Relevance [47] and irrelevant document [46] would make the users overestimate the durations than usual. Czerwinski et al. [18] found that the perceived duration of an uncompleted task would be overestimated, while the duration on a task completed successfully would be underestimated in various application scenarios (also known as Zeigarnik effect [59]). Although these studies shed some light on time perception in Web search environment, it is not clear whether some other fundamental factors would affect the time perception. ...
Due to the tremendous economic value of search result pages, search engine companies have invested a lot to improve their quality. Recently, much effort has been made to directly model key aspects of users' interactions with search system, for example, Benefit and Cost. Time has been widely adopted in both of the two aspects since benefit and cost must be expressed in meaningful units in practical application. Psychological studies have demonstrated that the subjectively perceived time might be different from the objective time measured by timing device and the time perception process of human beings is affected by some psychological factors, such as motivation and interest, which are closely related to the search process. Considering that time is usually used to describe the subject experience of search users, it is necessary to investigate the difference between perceived time and objective time in search process. In psychology, there is a temporal illusion effect named Vierordt's law, i.e. shorter intervals tend to be overestimated while longer intervals tend to be underestimated. In this work, we carefully designed a lab-study to examine the impact of duration length on user's time perception in the context of search. Experimental results show that Vierordt's law is consistently observed in Web search environment. This work could help us to correct the estimation of users' perceived time and provide insights about the mechanism of satisfaction.
... Weybrew extended Zeigarnik's work on task interruption by demonstrating that task interruptions cause participants to overestimate task duration (Weybrew, 1984). While interruptions cause task durations to by overestimated, non-interrupted tasks tended to be underestimated. ...
In this paper we demonstrate a new methodology that can be used to measure aesthetic differences by examining the cognitive effects produced by elevated mood. Specifically in this paper we examine the benefits of good typography and find that good typography induces a good mood. When participants were asked to read text with either good or poor typography in two studies, the participants who received the good typography performed better on relative subjective duration and on certain cognitive tasks.
... A later study by Van Bergen (1968) failed to replicate the ndings of Zeigarnik. Other researchers (SchiVman & Greist-Bousquet, 1992;Weybrew, 1984), focusing on the eVect of interruptions on the perception of time, con rmed that interruptions have an eVect on participants' recollection of their environment, but the existence of 'tension systems' was not demonstrated. These studies are of theoretical interest because they represent an attempt to clarify the cognitive processes involved in dealing with interruptions. ...
... Conversely, a completed task has reached closure and mental activity on the task has terminated, releasing task information from memory. The Zeigarnik effect extends to time perception in that it has been found that time estimates are longer for interrupted than completed tasks (Schiffman & Greist-Bousquet, 1992;Weybrew, 1984). This finding appears consistent with retrospective timing models, which suggest that more information retained in memory after interrupted tasks will lengthen time estimates. ...
The mental workload imposed by systems is important to their operation and usability. Consequently, researchers and practitioners need reliable, valid, and easy-to-administer methods for measuring mental workload. The ratio of perceived time to clock time appears to be such a method, yet mental workload has multiple dimensions of which the perceived time ratio has mainly been linked to the task-related dimension. In this study, we investigate how the perceived time ratio is affected by time constraints, which make time an explicit concern in the execution of tasks, and task success, which is a performance-related rather than task-related dimension of mental workload. We find a higher perceived time ratio for timed than untimed tasks. According to subjective workload ratings and pupil-diameter measurements the timed tasks impose higher mental workload. This finding contradicts the prospective paradigm, which asserts that perceived time decreases with increasing mental workload. We also find a higher perceived time ratio for solved than unsolved tasks, while subjective workload ratings indicate lower mental workload for the solved tasks. This finding shows that the relationship between the perceived time ratio and mental workload is reversed for task success compared to time constraints. We discuss implications for the use of perceived time as a measure of mental workload.
... Can we deduce from Macar's conclusion that an employee who interrupts his or her service renders the time estimation longer? Results from Weybrew (1984) and, even more convincingly, from Dube-Rioux et al. (1989) tend to suggest that such a relation exists. Weybrew shows that interrupted tasks are perceived as being longer than uninterrupted tasks, even if both tasks objectively take an equally long period of time. ...
Since consumers feel that time is becoming an increasingly scarcer
resource, service organizations are also becoming increasingly sensitive
to the economical and psychological costs which they impose on their
clients in waiting lines. Reports a study aimed at examining the
relations between two variables which are controllable by banks (i.e.
service interruption and clients' participation in the service process)
upon the perceived time spent in waiting lines, clients' mood and
perceived service quality. Results show that individuals who find the
waiting time “unacceptable” have a very significantly lower
mood and perceived the service as being of lower quality. Concludes that
perceived waiting time can be modified through managerially controllable
variables which also influence strategically important variables such as
client mood and perceived service quality.
... After a set amount of interaction Casey will excuse itself and ask the learner to continue. We intend to measure the effects of the interaction in terms of perseverance on subsequent tasks and self-rated, sensed and judge-rated frustration encountered in a subsequent task (Weybrew, 1984; Czerwinski et al., 2001). We will also ask learners their perceptions in terms of liking and caring for and by Casey, using the Working Aliance Inventory (Bickmore and Picard, 2004, Paiva et al., 2004). ...
Since failure, over and over and over again, is a prerequisite to becoming an expert, so to is the ability to persevere and remain motivated through failure. Many researchers creating ITSs have taken the approach of manipulating the task in terms of difficulty, focus, and other parameters in an effort to sustain users' motivation. There are numerous circumstances where this approach is impractical, undesirable, or simply impossible. This task-manipulation approach misses the important opportunity to help users develop skills to deal with failure and frustration. We propose instead an approach that uses affective agents 1 to help users develop metacognitive skills such as affective self-awareness for dealing with failure and frustration. An important element of our approach is the use of one or more affective agents as peer learning companions to facilitate development of empathetic relationships with learners. This paper describes work in progress exploring how characteristics of affective agents can influence perseverance in the face of failure. Introduction: We choose to focus on motivation through failure because of its importance in the learning process. At Stanford's Department of Mechanical Engineering there is a saying that, "Spectacular failure is better than moderate success." (Faste, 1996) This is not an overtly masochistic agenda, rather the message is that if you do not strive for spectacular success you will never achieve it; if you achieve moderate success you have not strived far enough." Kay's version of this sentiment is that, "difficulty should be sought out, as a spur to delving more deeply into an interesting area. An education system that tries to make everything easy and pleasurable will prevent much important learning from happening." (Kay, 1991) In Csikszentmihalyi's words this would be the notion of matching adequate challenge with skill in service of Flow, or optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). In this vein, in their chapter on Motivation and Failure in Educational Systems Design Roger Shank and Adam Neaman describe the utility of simulated Learning By Doing environments, to accelerate the pace of learning through exposure to difficult circumstances that may arise less frequently than in real world situations. This will inevitably accelerate the rate of failure and, if motivation is sustained, the rate of learning as, "novices are exposed to rare, but critical, experiences" (Schank, Neaman, 2001). Shank and Neaman acknowledge that fear of failure is a significant barrier to learning and believe this can be addressed in several ways: minimizing discouragement by lessening humiliation; developing the understanding that consequences of failure will be minimal; and providing motivation that outweighs or distracts the unpleasant aspects of failure. They show that they have been able to sustain the motivation of learners, who care about what they are doing, by providing them access to experts at the time of failure. Through questions, stories, anecdotes and additional experiences learners are given the opportunity to, "expend the effort to explain their failures". Learners are given the opportunity to achieve and become expert (Schank, Neaman, 2001). Many have taken the approach of tailoring the task to the individual user in an effort to maintain motivation, an affective state, Flow or optimal challenge (Malone, 1981; Monk, 2000, Hill et al., 2001). Hill et al. in their paper, Toward the Holodeck, discuss the merits of the creation of a Holodeck like setting in terms of its immersive, believable, and motivating qualities. This terminology is remarkably similar to descriptions of psychological Flow. 1 Affective Agents can sense users' affect and respond with displays of their own affect .
... A later study by Van Bergen (1968) failed to replicate the ndings of Zeigarnik. Other researchers (SchiVman & Greist-Bousquet, 1992;Weybrew, 1984), focusing on the eVect of interruptions on the perception of time, con rmed that interruptions have an eVect on participants' recollection of their environment, but the existence of 'tension systems' was not demonstrated. These studies are of theoretical interest because they represent an attempt to clarify the cognitive processes involved in dealing with interruptions. ...
Although interruptions are daily occurring events for most working people, little research has been done on the impacts of interruptions on workers and their performance. This study examines the effects of interruptions on task performance and its regulation, as well as on workers' psychological and psychophysiological state. Two parallel experiments were carried out in the Netherlands and in Russia, using a common conceptual framework and overlapping designs. Employees with relevant work experience carried out realistic text editing tasks in a simulated office environment, while the frequency and complexity of interruptions were experimentally manipulated.
It was hypothesized that interruptions: (i) would cause a deterioration of performance; (ii) evoke strategies to partially compensate for this deterioration; (iii) affect subjects' emotions and well‐being negatively; and (iv) raise the level of effort and activation. It was also hypothesized that greater frequency and complexity of interruptions would enhance the expected effects.
The hypotheses are only partially confirmed. The results show that, contrary to what was expected, interruptions cause people to perform the main task faster while maintaining the level of quality. Participants develop strategies enabling them to deal effectively with the interruptions, while actually over‐compensating the potential performance decline. Interruptions do have a negative impact on emotion and well‐being, and lead to an increase of effort expenditure, although not to an increase in activation. Thus the improved performance is achieved at the expense of higher psychological costs. Greater complexity evoked more favourable responses among the Dutch participants and more unfavourable ones among the Russian participants. These differences are interpreted in terms of the participants' professional background.
The research demonstrates that the effects of interruptions reach beyond the execution of additional tasks and the change of work strategies. Interruptions appear to have an after‐effect, influencing the workers' subsequent readiness to perform. Detailed analysis of the activity in the interruption interval, focusing on cognitive processes during episodes of ‘change‐over’ and ‘resumption’ support this interpretation.
Psychological research has shown that 'peak-end' effects influence people's retrospective evaluation of hedonic and affective experience. Rather than objectively reviewing the total amount of pleasure or pain during an experience, people's evaluation is shaped by the most intense moment (the peak) and the final moment (end). We describe an experiment demonstrating that peak-end effects can influence a user's preference for interaction sequences that are objectively identical in their overall requirements. Participants were asked to choose which of two interactive sequences of five pages they preferred. Both sequences required setting a total of 25 sliders to target values, and differed only in the distribution of the sliders across the five pages -- with one sequence intended to induce positive peak-end effects, the other negative. The study found that manipulating only the peak or the end of the series did not significantly change preference, but that a combined manipulation of both peak and end did lead to significant differences in preference, even though all series had the same overall effort.
https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/files/350974/82325.pdf
This thesis has developed an affective agent research platform that advances the architecture of relational agents and intelligent tutoring systems. The system realizes non-invasive multimodal real-time sensing of elements of user's affective state and couples this ability with an agent capable of supporting learners by engaging in real-time responsive expressivity. The agent mirrors several non-verbal behaviors believed to influence persuasion, liking, and social rapport, and responds to frustration with empathetic or task-support dialogue. Pilot studies involved 60 participants, ages 10-14 years-old, and led to an experiment involving 76 participants, ages 11-13 years-old, engaging in the Towers of Hanoi activity. The system (data collection, architecture, character interaction, and activity presentation) was iteratively tested and refined, and two "mirroring" conditions were developed: "sensor driven non-verbal interactions" and "pre-recorded non-verbal interactions". The development and training of the classifier algorithms showed the ability to predict frustration/help seeking behavior with 79% accuracy across a pilot group of 24 participants.
The comparison of two treatments generally falls into one of the following two categories: (a) we may have a number of replications for each of the two treatments, which are unpaired, or (b) we may have a number of paired comparisons leading to a series of differences, some of which may be positive and some negative. The appropriate methods for testing the significance of the differences of the means in these two cases are described in most of the textbooks on statistical methods.
A study of the influence of various occupations (relaxation, holding arms extended in order to produce fatigue, listening to slow metronome, to rapid metronome, holding the palm on a thumbtack, reading from the reflection in a mirror, taking dictation, doing problems in division) upon estimation of a period of 200 sec. by 326 subjects. The first 5 situations above were overestimated, and the last 3 were underestimated. From statistical treatment the writer concludes that the actual differences between the situations are even more significant than the differences obtained. Women tended to estimate durations longer than did men, but the differences in respect to variability are not so marked. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hope, an ingredient of morale, implies a psychological future which is part of time perspective. The actions, emotions, and morale of an individual depend upon his time perspective. So do tenacity and persistency in the face of suffering or obstacles, as shown by experiments. This ability to 'take it on the chin' is an aspect of a more fundamental state characterized by initiative, productivity, and a determination to reach certain goals. A realistic yet rising level of aspiration seems a criterion of high morale. In regard to group morale the importance of definite goals is indicated, "not those goals which can be reached easily but a psychological future with obstacles and high goals." Good morale implies the choosing of goals neither too immediate nor too distant, and being convinced that one's action leads in the desired direction. A postscript comments on American morale since the country entered the war. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In a series of experiments upon the estimation of time intervals ranging from 1 to 10 minutes in length but filled so as to produce different degrees of need-tension, (i.e., a state of strain, accompanied sometimes by emotional excitement, that results whenever any need is aroused) a general tendency was found for periods in which there is a relatively greater need-tension to be estimated as shorter than periods in which there is less. Certain theoretical suggestions are offered in which attention is directed to the similarity of the phenomena under consideration to everyday instances of wishful thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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