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The Effects of Task Difficulty and Multitasking on Performance
Abstract
Multitasking is prevalent during computer-mediated work. Users tend to switch between multiple ongoing computer-based tasks
either due to a personal decision to break from the current task (self-interruption) or due to an external interruption, such
as an electronic notification. To examine how different types of multitasking, along with subjective task difficulty, influence
performance, we conducted a controlled experiment using a custom-developed multitasking environment. A total of 636 subjects
were randomly assigned into one of the three conditions: discretionary, where they were allowed to decide when and how often to switch tasks; mandatory, where they were forced to switch tasks at specific times; and sequential, where they had to perform tasks in sequence, without switching. The experimental environment featured a primary problem-solving
task and five secondary tasks. The results show that when the primary task was considered difficult, subjects forced to multitask
had significantly lower performance compared with not only the subjects who did not multitask but also the subjects who were
able to multitask at their discretion. Conversely, when the primary task was considered easy, subjects forced to multitask
had significantly higher performance than both the subjects who did not multitask and the subjects who multitasked at their
discretion.
... Multitasking, a common demand in the modern workplace, is defined as the requirement for employees to handle multiple complex tasks simultaneously, which can be a pervasive source of stress (Chen et al. 2022). Under this stressor, employees experience increased role ambiguity (Adler and Benbunan-Fich 2015), role overload (Wetherell and Carter 2014), and anxiety (Spink et al. 2008), which may negatively impact subsequent cognitive states (e.g., psychological detachment) and behaviors (e.g., creative process engagement). Creative process engagement, defined as active participation in creative activities, plays a pivotal role in driving work-related creative behaviors (Zhang and Bartol 2010a). ...
... These lead to higher labor intensity and workload (Kudesia et al. 2022), making it difficult for employees to mentally detach from work (Boekhorst et al. 2017). Second, multitasking imposes greater time and effort demands for task completion (Adler and Benbunan-Fich 2015), potentially overwhelming work responsibilities and undermining psychological detachment (Sonnentag and Fritz 2007). Finally, the presence of unfinished tasks and the perpetual sense of being "on-call" due to multitasking can intensify work-related stress and perpetuate a feeling of being bound to work obligations (Spink et al. 2008), which hinders psychological detachment (Sonnentag and Fritz 2015). ...
In the digital‐driven workplace, individuals are required to multitask frequently while maintaining high levels of creativity to stay indispensable. But does multitasking promote or hinder creative process engagement? Utilizing the stressor‐detachment model, this study examines the links between multitasking and creative process engagement. Through a survey of 329 employees conducted over three time points, findings reveal that psychological detachment mediates the negative relationship between multitasking and creative process engagement. Furthermore, temporal leadership mitigates the negative relationship between multitasking and psychological detachment and, by extension, the indirect relationship between multitasking and creative process engagement via psychological detachment.
... AI agents are even being developed to help novice users better manage overwhelming numbers of e-mail tasks. 1 The rise of powerful mobile devices such as smart phones also generated significant research interest in the related problem of "multitasking." [2][3][4] These are just few examples of the importance of information technology (IT) task management and the benefits obtained from improved performance. Given that it is relatively easy to control the sequence of tasks for IT users, if there is a significant impact on their performance for a preferred sequence, then this could lead to substantial improvements. ...
... In the IT field, research on factors affecting task performance include work on task differences and task sequencing 12,17,[25][26][27][28][29] and multitasking. [2][3][4] However, an intensive literature search has revealed that only the work of Wang and Arisholm 12 has addressed the SDE in the IT environment. Specifically, these authors studied how the order of software maintenance tasks affected the performance of programmers. ...
This paper determines whether the “sequential difficulty effect” or SDE holds for complex information technology tasks. The SDE hypothesizes that users will perform worse on an easy task when given a difficult task first, as compared to when subjects are given an easy task first followed a difficult one. The experiment compares how business professionals perform a series of related BI tasks of varying difficulty. The task sequence was controlled in the experiment. The results did not support the SDE and indicate that the SDE might not be generalizable to more complex tasks. One significant difference in overall user performance was found for those who were presented with the most difficult task first and who successfully completed it. This finding supports the concept of “resource engagement” whereby the cognitive resources employed for the difficult task carry over into the following tasks for certain individuals.
... However, increasing arousal can result in an overload in arousal and a decline in performance (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). This is referred to as the inverted-U theory proposed by Yerkes and Dodson (1908 as cited in Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2014). Lavie's (1995) perceptual load theory suggests that the capacity for perceptual processing is finite and only once we have reached the capacity limit do we become more selective with respect to the information we process such that only task-relevant information is selected. ...
... However, it has been argued that the remaining capacity might allow for the involuntary processing of irrelevant information to impede performance (Lavie, 1995;Roper, Cosman, & Vecera, 2013). Adler and Benbunan-Fich (2014) reasoned that both easy and hard tasks are negatively impacted, with hard tasks leading to an overload in resources causing important information to potentially be missed, while easier tasks results in the processing of distractions and irrelevant information. ...
Sleep disruption literature has largely focused on exploring sleep disruptions effects on relatively simple tasks with less attention given to how it impacts more complex tasks. Further, research has given very little attention on how performance fairs when participants also have to switch between tasks, in both a voluntary and forced state. The goal of this thesis was, therefore, to expand on previous investigations of sleep loss and its effects on performance of complex visuo-cognitive tasks whilst either voluntarily or forcibly task switching. Over the course of four experiments this was examined. Experiment 1 and 2 explored the effects of both sleep restriction and sleep deprivation and the cost they have on voluntary task switching performance. These experiments revealed that individuals can largely compensate for the negative effects of sleep restriction especially when they spend longer preparing for an upcoming switch in tasks. However, when they have experienced sleep deprivation these effects become more severe, causing fewer words to be generated and an increase in the number of switches made. Experiment 3, explored how the removal of control over the task in terms of forcing them when to switch, impacted performance between sleep conditions, while also seeing how it compares to voluntary switching. Results highlighted that once control of the task was removed a larger profile of errors emerged.
Specifically, with the reduction in the number of words in both the sleep deprived condition and the forced switching condition, as well as, sleep deprived participants having a longer resumption lag. Finally, Experiment 4 addressed two key components. The first component addressed the sensitivity of subjective measures of sleepiness versus objective measures of sleepiness. Results highlighted that subjective measures of sleepiness are more sensitive to the feelings of fatigue and are resilient against individual differences unlike the objective measures. The second component aimed to address the differences between voluntary versus forced switching and sleep deprived versus Control while switching between two tasks that contained two different types of cognitive task goals. Issues arose during data collection that hindered collection of a full dataset and subsequently no firm conclusions can be drawn. Based on the results from these experiments, this thesis demonstrates that the negative effects of sleep loss are dependent on the task constraints and the amount of sleep lost. However, it is clear the harder the task becomes the more difficult it is for individuals to compensate for the negative effects of fatigue when performing complex visuo-cognitive tasks. The implication of this research is that both fatigue and task switching are an important consideration when managing small daily tasks whilst also addressing the potential impact it poses on safety concerns in many industries.
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... They found the highest performance in terms of productivity with a medium amount of multitasking and decreases as the level of multitasking rose or fell. In another study, the same authors found that switching between tasks can be beneficial, especially in situations with simple rather than complex primary tasks (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2014). Adler and Benbunan-Fich's research indicates that, in certain conditions, a second task's introduction can have a positive effect on individuals' work performance. ...
... Employees face a wide array of interruptions to their work time-from both external and internal sources (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2014). Some of these interruptions may be regularly scheduled, but many are unpredictable and unplanned (McFarlane, 2002). ...
... Substantial evidence exists that multitasking impairs task performance, especially when one of the tasks is difficult (e.g., Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2012;2015), There is also a plethora of evidence that mind wandering (e.g., Randall et al., 2014;Thomson et al., 2014) impairs performance, yet recent evidence suggests that some learning may occur even when one is mind wandering (Brosowsky et al., 2021). Brosowsky et al. (2021) used a serial reaction time task (SRT) with implicit-and explicit-learning conditions to evaluate whether implicit learning occurs even when participants report mind wandering. ...
The goal of the current study was to replicate resent findings that suggest mind wandering is associated with impaired explicit learning but not implicit learning, and to extend those finding by investigating whether explicit learning is impaired under attentional load, but implicit learning is not. We used a sequential learning task, specifically a serial reaction task (SRT), to determine if mind wandering would interfere with learning a task that does not require attentional resources (implicit learning). Participants completed the serial reaction time task while watching a 13-minute video lecture. At the end of the video participants answered 10 multiple-choice questions regarding the content presented in the video. At specific intervals during the task, participants responded to mind wandering probes. The probes required participants to report where their attention was in the moments before the probe appeared. Implicit learning was measured by decreased reaction time over the course of several blocks of trials of the SRT. In two experiments, it was observed that participants implicitly learned a sequence of 12 items, regardless of their performance on the multiple-choice item regarding the concurrent video content. Even those who appeared to actively engage with the video and performed well on the multiple-choice questions showed improved performance on the implicit learning task (SRT). These results suggest implicit learning can occur when one is engaged in a concurrent explicit learning task.
... In a nutshell, multitasking entails performing numerous things at the same time. It has been noticed that frequent interruptions during tough work might have a detrimental impact on performance, whereas they can have a favorable impact on performance in easy activities (Adler and Benbunan, 2015). Supervisors are concerned that staff may be unable to transition between jobs properly as a result of multitasking. ...
This study aimed to examine the time stealing behavior established among secretariate employees in Peshawar and prevalence of the most common type of time stealing behavior. Ministerial staff of Civil Secretariate Peshawar was taken as population of the study. Primary Data were collected from 610 officer/staff members through questionnaire. SPSS was used a statistical tool for the analysis of the data. Descriptive analysis, correlation, and regression analysis were undertaken to find out the relationship of dependent with explanatory variables. This study establishes positive significant relationships among development of time stealing behavior with workload and job insecurity. The study witnessed a negative correlation of organization commitment with the dependent variable. It was also found that classic type of time stealing behavior is the most prevailing one in all six public sector universities. The practical implication of the study is to recognize various predictors of time banditry confirmed by this study, time banditry factors will be reduced if the managers and supervisors play their role efficiently and will be able to take preventive steps to minimize and reduce the effect of this behavior.
... Dari berbagai scheduling algorithm yang ada, Multilevel Feedback Queue (MLQ) dinilai lebih baik daripada algoritma yang lain karena kemampuannya untuk meminimalkan rata-rata flow time tugas, sehingga meningkatkan daya tanggap sistem dan mengelola campuran proses dengan karakteristik eksekusi yang beragam secara efisien (5,6). Tidak hanya itu, karena terdapat berbagai campuran proses dan karakteristik eksekusi yang dapat dikembangkan dengan MLQ, hingga saat ini banyak penelitian yang dilakukan untuk mengembangkan algoritma MLQ yang lebih efisien. ...
Application development has experienced a shift towards a cross-platform approach, where developers can write code once for multiple platforms. Flutter, as a fast-growing cross-platform framework with a wide community is one of the most popular cross-platform frameworks today. However, along with that, there is an increase in application complexity which makes the concept of multitasking very important. This article proposes the implementation of the Multilevel Feedback Queue (MLQ) scheduling algorithm in Flutter applications, which can help manage tasks and improve application efficiency. This research aims to examine the changes in application efficiency after the implementation of MLQ, as well as examine whether the changes remain relevant on different operating systems, namely Windows and Android. The implemented MLQ algorithm is an algorithm with adjustments to the calculation of time quantum and integration with the Shortest Job First (SJF) algorithm based on previous research. Tests were conducted using the Flutter benchmarking feature to measure the application frame rate before and after MLQ implementation on Windows and Android. The results of this study found that the implementation of MLQ increased application efficiency by 269% on the Windows operating system and 155% on the Android operating system.
... Unlike concurrent multitasking, which involves dividing attention between multiple tasks at the same time, Adler & Benbunan (2015) argue that sequential multitasking allows individuals to focus their attention on one task at a time, which may improve performance and decrease errors. Also, Waite et. ...
اللغة أمر بالغ الأهمية لتطور المجتمع البشري. إنها وسيلة أساسية للتواصل بين الأفراد والجماعات والأمم. في الوقت الحاضر، يتعلم عدد متزايد من الأشخاص اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية أو لغة ثانية، بهدف رئيسي هو تحقيق إتقان اللغة الإنجليزية والتواصل مع الآخرين. تتيح المهارات الإنتاجية للمتعلمين التعبير عن أفكارهم وأفكارهم وآرائهم باللغة الإنجليزية. أنها تمكن المتعلمين من المشاركة في المحادثات، والمشاركة في المناقشات، ونقل رسائلهم بشكل فعال.كما يشير تعدد المهام إلى القدرة على التعامل مع مهام متعددة وإدارتها في وقت واحد.لذلك، تتناول الدراسة الحالية العلاقة بين التعامل مع تعدد المهام والأداء في المهارات الإنتاجية لدى طلاب جامعة العراقيين دارسي اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية. ولهذا الغرض تم اختيار عينة مكونة من 360 طالباً من مختلف الجامعات العراقية (منها بغداد والبصرة والموصل) وكليات التربية – أقسام اللغة الإنجليزية بشكل عشوائي خلال العام الدراسي (2022-2023) كعينة لهذه الدراسة. من اجل تحقيق اهداف الدراسة، تم استخدام ثلاث أدوات لجمع البيانات: استبيان لقياس التعامل مع تعدد المهام، واختبار إنتاجي لتقييم أداء الطلاب في التحدث والكتابة، وتم إجراء التحليل الارتباطي لفحص العلاقة بين التعامل مع تعدد المهام والأداء في المهارات الإنتاجية. تشير النتائج إلى أن طلاب جامعة اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية يمتلكون مستوى جيد في التعامل مع المهام المتعددة. علاوة على ذلك، كشفت الدراسة عن وجود علاقة إيجابية بين التعامل مع تعدد المهام والمهارات الإنتاجية مما يشير إلى أن الطلاب الذين يستخدمون هذه المهام المتعددة يؤدون أداءً أفضل في التحدث والكتابة. وأظهرت النتائج أيضًا أن التعامل مع تعدد المهام يساهم بشكل كبير في تفسير التباين في المهارات الإنتاجية.
... According to Adler and Benbunan-Fich (2015), multitasking can affect a person's mental state and performance. In addition, constant interruptions and disturbances can alter and deteriorate a person's output and performance. ...
Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to explore the experiences, struggles, and coping mechanisms of educators currently pursuing doctoral degrees. Research methodology: This narrative research explored the experiences of three (3) STEM teachers in the Division of San Pablo City, who are also enrolled as doctoral students in a private graduate school. Participants were selected through purposive sampling and underwent one-on-one in-person interviews. To better understand STEM-aligned teachers' experiences in teaching vis-à-vis their doctoral education, the Colaizzi method of analysis was utilized. Results: Five themes emerged in this study: (1) practical reasons such as promotion and higher salary cause participants to take doctoral education; (2) challenges such as expensive education, heavy workload, distress, struggles, and strictness of professors are experienced by doctoral students; (3) intrapersonal motivation fuels participants in learning and teaching; (4) cultivating professionally; and (5) personally are what the participants see as benefits of pursuing doctoral education. Limitations: The programs of the participants in their doctoral education were not explicitly specified. Findings may be different if participants take a degree related to their specialization (e.g., science education, mathematics, etc.). In addition, the experiences of teachers teaching in private schools who are pursuing doctoral education may also be explored for comparison of experiences. Contribution: This research could be beneficial to educational institutions where doctoral students teach by adapting to more open policies and regulations that can help teachers attend schools. Moreover, graduate schools may mandate working-student-friendly schedules and policies regarding deadlines and tasks.
... Other variables included total completion time, multitasking priority, and hand use. We were interested in studying task difficulty as a factor as it has been shown evidence to affect task performance for several decades generally (Campbell & Ilgen, 1976;Dunn & Williamson, 2012;Huber, 1985;Radeborg et al., 1999) and in multitasking particularly (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2015;Lansdown et al., 2004;Liu et al., 2016). Since increasing the task complexity would make performance maintenance challenging (Liu et al., 2016), positive relationships were found between task difficulty and mental workload measures (Pagnotta et al., 2022). ...
... The difficulty of the tasks is possibly increasing when the amount of information provided in the material is huge, and the relationship within the information is comparatively high. It may lead them to poor performance when constructing the concept map since the task's difficulty level affects the subject's performance during multitasking [1]. Hence, KBCM tries to support the students by providing them with the concepts and links extracted from the teacher's map. ...
Improving the quality of the concept map affects the activation of Higher-Order Thinking. Various methods for manually evaluating the quality of concept maps have been developed. However, these methods can consume a substantial amount of time and burden teachers with a heavy workload. The Kit-Build concept map is a framework for learning that enables the automatic evaluation of concept maps. The prior study has proven that raising the concept map quality using the Kit-Build concept map affects learning achievement. However, the effect has yet to be investigated on Higher-Order Thinking activation. This study aimed to investigate the influence of the enhancement of concept map quality on Higher-Order Thinking stimulation in the Kit-Build concept map. The Higher-Order Thinking activation was measured from the student’s performance in solving the Higher-Order Thinking questions. This study also evaluated the validity of the concept map automated assessment in the Kit-Build concept map by comparing the assessment results of the method with the assessment results of the manual method. This study’s results suggested that improving the quality of concept maps by using the Kit-Build concept map could activate Higher-Order Thinking. The findings also showed that the automated assessment in the Kit-Build concept map was a promising tool that could be utilized to assess the quality of concept maps.KeywordsKit Build concept mapConcept map assessment methodHigher-Order Thinking
... The findings support the assumption that self-assessments and related feedback support learning processes and impact the learning performance (Adler and Benbunan-Fich, 2015;Azevedo and Bernard, 1995). Thus, students who were classified with more master subject areas outperformed students who were classified with fewer master subject areas. ...
Purpose
This study aims to focus on providing a computerized classification testing (CCT) system that can easily be embedded as a self-assessment feature into the existing legacy environment of a higher education institution, empowering students with self-assessments to monitor their learning progress and following strict data protection regulations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of two different versions (without dashboard vs with dashboard) of the CCT system during the course of a semester; to examine changes in the intended use and perceived usefulness of two different versions (without dashboard vs with dashboard) of the CCT system; and to compare the self-reported confidence levels of two different versions (without dashboard vs with dashboard) of the CCT system.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of N = 194 students from a higher education institution in the area of economic and business education participated in the study. The participants were provided access to the CCT system as an opportunity to self-assess their domain knowledge in five areas throughout the semester. An algorithm was implemented to classify learners into master and nonmaster. A total of nine metrics were implemented for classifying the performance of learners. Instruments for collecting co-variates included the study interest questionnaire (Cronbach’s a = 0. 90), the achievement motivation inventory (Cronbach’s a = 0. 94), measures focusing on perceived usefulness and demographic data.
Findings
The findings indicate that the students used the CCT system intensively throughout the semester. Students in a cohort with a dashboard available interacted more with the CCT system than students in a cohort without a dashboard. Further, findings showed that students with a dashboard available reported significantly higher confidence levels in the CCT system than participants without a dashboard.
Originality/value
The design of digitally supported learning environments requires valid formative (self-)assessment data to better support the current needs of the learner. While the findings of the current study are limited concerning one study cohort and a limited number of self-assessment areas, the CCT system is being further developed for seamless integration of self-assessment and related feedback to further reveal unforeseen opportunities for future student cohorts.
... Such switching may happen by self-choice where individuals decide to take a break from their current task or it can happen due to an external interruption. The effects of multitasking in digital contexts have been analysed with varying levels of task difficulties (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2015). Multitasking under difficult task conditions can be detrimental to students' performance possibly because it can result in too much arousal and an overload in students' working memory (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). ...
... Workload reflects two aspects: objective task performance and demands for operator's ability. Task-related factors involved in information flow, multitasking, difficulty, and duration (time pressure) affect workload (Adler and Benbunan-Fich, 2015). Three types of measurements are investigated to assess workload in this research : 1) task performance: task completion rate, task completion time); 2) eye-tracking measures (see Table 1): gaze entropy, pupil change rate, fixation rate of AOI, and blink rate; 3) ...
With the development of virtual reality technology and human-computer interaction technology, workload assessment in a virtual reality environment become a reality. Using virtual reality technology to design digital models to simulate products and verify related solutions can reduce costs, shorten the development cycle, and improve the quality of product design. The goal of this paper is to verify the effectiveness of workload assessment in a virtual reality environment. In this study, the ship console system is an example to conduct a comparative experiment in the virtual prototype and physical prototype. Workload assessment indicators include task performance (task completion rate, task completion time), eye tracking measures (gaze entropy, pupil change rate and fixation rate of AOI, etc.), and subjective scales (NASA_TLX). According to a ship console’s size, display interface, and environment, a digital model and the experimental environment were built in Unity engine. The data were collected to verify the consistency of the experimental results of the VR prototype and the physical prototype. There was no significant difference in task completion rate, NASA_TLX scores, fixation rate of AOI, pupil change rate, gaze entropy, and blink rate between the two prototype systems. The results show that the VR prototype can be used to replace the physical prototype for workload assessment to some extent.
... Comparatively, Camden et al's (2015) study of workload demonstrated that an increased number of tasks with the same difficulty had no interaction effects between the number of task numbers and performance. Whereas other studies have suggested that subjective perception of difficulty could also explain lowered performance (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2014). However, it remains unclear if undertaking the tasks for a longer period would result in performance differences. ...
Multitasking and switching between tasks is a universal function in many occupations as juggling tasks simultaneously can increase task productivity especially with, factors such as workload that can lead to decrements and impair human performance. Fatigue can refer to the effects or after-effects of exerting mental and or physical effort on a task. Fatigue inducing factors such as high workload and time-on-task can impact task management, optimization and prioritization which can lead to performance decrements. Despite the universality of multitasking, from aviation to driving a car whilst talking simultaneously, it is unclear as to what underlying cognitive processes are affected by induced fatigue. This brief narrative review explores the dynamics of cognitive processes with induced fatigue on individual operator and task contexts. With an interest in cognitive-behavioral models and the Multi-Attribute Task Battery II (MAT-B II), this review aims to provide a conceptual background of the MAT-B II and its diverse use in modelling multitasking environments. By describing and investigating fatigue with multidisciplinary expertise, the development and implementation of countermeasures can enhance performance to mitigate the deleterious effects of workload and time-on-task.
... In the current analysis, gender was dummy-coded (1 = female and 2 = male). Several studies have also identified the daily habit of technology or phone use as a significant determinant of multitasking behavior (Chen et al., 2021;Wei & Wang, 2010); and the difficulty level of the course material could trigger multitasking as well (Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2015). Additionally, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are the two primary types of motivated academic behavior (Cokley & Kevin, 2003), and they are often jointly used for measuring motivational variables (Lin et al., 2003;Sansone & Harackiewicz, 2000). ...
Framed by social learning theory, the study examines a set of personal and social factors determining off-task social media multitasking inside university classrooms. We aim to clarify the relationships between social media multitasking and self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, multitasking preference as well as peer distraction, and to elucidate the interactive relationships between these factors. Questionnaire data from 203 university students in China show that academic self-efficacy fully mediates the association between intrinsic motivation and off-task multitasking. Moreover, multitasking preference partially mediates the association between peer distraction and off-task multitasking during class time. The findings of the study contribute to a deeper understanding of why students multitask during class, which can inform the development of strategies for combating social media distraction and enhancing students’ learning engagement.
... Consequently, our results also have some implications for research on multitasking within organizations; and suggest that the requirement to multitask specifically may lead to more reliance on some type of heuristic (although it is unclear which specific heuristic that might be, given the conflicting results in Study 1 vs. Study 2). This is likely to be particularly true when faced with situations of heightened ambiguity (as was the case with the ipsative hiring ratings in the present study), or other difficult tasks with high intrinsic cognitive load (see Adler & Benbunan-Fich, 2015). ...
Job interviews are cognitively demanding tasks for interviewers. However, it is unclear whether the high cognitive load (CL) that interviewers face will ultimately compromise the resistance to discrimination that otherwise distinguishes structured interviews from other selection methods. Using a two-study experimental design, we explored the effect of cognitive load on gender discrimination in structured job interviews. In Study 1, participants completed an online interview simulation in which they assessed both a male and a female candidate applying for either a male- or female-dominated job, while under either a high or low degree of cognitive load. Participants provided ratings of each candidate's suitability for the job as well as a final, ipsative hiring decision. Study 2 served as a larger replication of Study 1. Overall, CL was not found to affect candidate ratings. These results support the structured interview's general resistance to discrimination.
Practitioner points
• Previous research supports structured interviews' relative resistance to discrimination.
• Our research demonstrates that structured interviews can minimize discrimination, even when hiring for highly “gendered” jobs.
• The (small) effects of discrimination were different in our study for each of the following outcomes: ratings of specific competencies, global candidate ratings, and final hiring decisions.
• Certain competencies themselves may be gender-typed. Using structured ratings can mitigate the extent to which stereotypes ultimately translate into discriminatory candidate ratings.
• Across the two studies, there was some reliance on heuristic decision-making under conditions of high cognitive load.
• The overall weak effects of cognitive load on participants' overall hiring decisions highlights the structured interview's resistance to discrimination.
... In teamwork, the task performed by each participant (organization 2) was less complex than in multitasking (organization 1). Referring to [30], multitasking and task complexity can lead to low performance and thus low cooperation. Lack of training on tasks, processes, and teamwork could also have an impact on participants' teamwork behaviors and the team's performance. ...
Humans are currently experiencing the fourth industrial revolution called Industry 4.0. This revolution came about with the arrival of new technologies that promise to change the way humans work and interact with each other and with machines. It aims to improve the cooperation between humans and machines for mutual enrichment. This would be done by leveraging human knowledge and experience, and by reactively balancing some complex or complicated tasks with intelligent systems. To achieve this objective, methodological approaches based on experimental studies should be followed to ensure a proper evaluation of human-machine system design choices. This paper proposes an experimental study based on a platform that uses an intelligent manufacturing system made up of mobile robots, autonomous shuttles using the principle of intelligent products, and manufacturing robots in the context of Manufacturing 4.0. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of teamwork human-machine cooperation, performance, and workload of the human operator. The results showed a lower level of participants’ assessment of time demand and physical demand in teamwork conditions. It was also found that the team working improves the subjective human operator Know-how-to-cooperate when controlling the autonomous shuttles. Moreover, the results showed that in addition to the work organization, other personal parameters, such as the frequency of playing video games could affect the performance and state of the human operator. They raised the importance of further analysis to determine cooperative patterns in a group of humans that can be adapted to improve human-machine cooperation.
... Human operators cannot be left out of this process as their performance is fundamentally determined by the performance of the alarm system and vice versa (Nochur et al., 2001). The overload of operators is disadvantageous for the success of alarm management as multi-tasking negatively impacts the performance and execution time of a task (Adler and Benbunan-Fich, 2014), in turn, increasing the possibility of errors (Monsell, 2003). There are numerous approaches to incorporate the operator performance to the overall performance assessment of alarm systems. ...
Despite significant efforts to measure and assess the performance of alarm systems, to this day, no silver bullet has been found. The majority of the existing standards and guidelines focus on the alarm load of the operators, either during normal or upset plant conditions, and only a small fraction takes into consideration the actions performed by the operators. In this study, an overview of the evolution of alarm system performance metrics is presented and the current data-based approaches are grouped into seven categories based on the goals of and the methodologies associated with each metric. Deriving from our categorical overview, the terminological differences between the academic and industrial approaches of alarm system performance measurement are reflected. Moreover, we highlight how extremely unbalanced the performance measurement of alarm systems is towards quantitative metrics instead of focusing on qualitative assessment, invoking the threat of excessive alarm reductions resulting from such a unilateral approach. The critical aspects of qualitative performance measurement of alarm systems is demonstrated in terms of the comparison of the alarm system of an industrial hydrofluoric acid alkylation unit before and after the alarm rationalization process. The quality of the alarm messages is measured via their informativeness and actionability, in other words, how appropriate the parameter settings are for the everyday work and how actionable they are by the operators of the process.
... Los bonos configuran un alto ingreso salarial, por lo que procuran atender la mayor cantidad de clientes y realizar la mayor cantidad de operaciones para poder alcanzar la meta mensual. Se ha observado que el trabajo compuesto por actividades multitarea de alta complejidad cognitiva produce mayor excitabilidad mental y bajos rendimientos (25) . Otro componente importante en la carga de trabajo es la demanda emocional. ...
Objective:
We examined associations between psychosocial risk factors and musculoskeletal discomfort among tellers at a bank Lima, Peru.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional descriptive study of 234 workers. The instruments used were the Questionnaire of Psychosocial Risks at Work SUSESO - ISTAS 21 Short Version, an adaptation of the Nordic Musculoskeletal DiscomfortQuestionnaire and a sociodemographic data sheet. These two questionnaires were administered between September and November 2018. We analyzed associations between the two main study variables with chi-square tests.
Results:
The most prevalent psychosocial factor dimensions were "psychological demands" (50.1%) and "double presence" (49.1%). The most frequent musculoskeletal discomfort were in the neck (75.9%) and thoracolumbar (75%) areas. We observed an association between the level of psychosocial risk in the "compensation" dimension and the number of body regions affected by musculoskeletal discomfort (p<0.05).
Conclusions:
There is a relationship between the level of psychosocial risk in the "compensation" dimension and the number of body regions with reported musculoskeletal discomfort. We recommend implementing psychosocial risk factor preventive measures to avoid musculoskeletal discomfort in bank tellers.
... Furthermore, to improve passenger perceived airport SST performance and perceived technology self-efficacy beliefs, airport managers need to continuously seek to simplify airport SSTs in terms of design improvement concerning user interface and critical performance determiners of airport SST performance. Task difficulty is found to influence performance [90,91] and perceived self-efficacy beliefs [88,92]. This indicates that easy-to-use airport SSTs enhances perceived performance, leading to higher satisfaction. ...
Airports are rapidly deploying self-service technologies (SSTs) as a strategy to improve passenger experience by eliminating operational inefficiencies. This places some responsibility on the passengers to shape their experience. As service coproducers, passengers’ self-concepts and attributional tendencies are deemed instrumental in their consumption processes. Accordingly, drawing on the tenets of attribution theory, this study explores the interaction effects of passenger self-concept (am I competent at this?) and causal inference (who is responsible for SSTs’ performance?) on SST performance and satisfaction with airport SST link. Additionally, the probable spillover effect of passenger satisfaction with SST performance on satisfaction with airport and on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is examined. The sample for the study consisted of 547 passengers departing from an airport in Shanghai, China. Structural equation modeling was utilized to test the study’s theoretical model. The findings indicate that airport SSTs’ performance influences passenger satisfaction with airport SSTs. The multiplicative effect of passenger self-concept (am I competent at this?) in the moderating role of passenger causal inference (who is responsible for SSTs’ performance?) in SST performance and satisfaction with SST link is demonstrated. Furthermore, the spillover effect of satisfaction with SST performance on satisfaction with airport and on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is illustrated. Given the current need for contactlessness, the findings proffer critical managerial and research insights.
... With respect to the aspect of difficulty, demanding objectives are, by definition, more troublesome to accomplish and there may be a lack of agreement as to whether such pursuits would favour or rather hamper the likelihood of stellar performance. The majority of empirical investigations into the subject matter, however, appear to render this lack of consensus invalid, as the projects in question yielded convincing evidence for the existence of a reciprocal relationship between task difficulty level and performance quality (Miles and Clenney 2012;Adler and Benbunan-Fich 2014;Adler et al. 2015). ...
This book attempts to demystify concerns surrounding a novel motivational construct known as a Directed Motivational Current. The study aimed at exploring whether a high sense of efficacy may support a person in transforming short-spanned motivational episodes into longitudinal engagement typical for the DMC framework. To this end, a sequential exploratory mixed methodology was used. Subsequently, a link between well-anchored efficacy beliefs and the rate at which DMCs occur was indeed discovered. This was further reinforced by the outcomes of personalised interviews. Eventually, the research yielded several noteworthy conclusions, including the fact that imbuing the DMC structure with elements of efficacy building may lead to long-term, sustained behaviour in a foreign language classroom.
... However, the concept of subgoals coincides with research results on human behaviors when performing complicated tasks. Research in [11], [12] shows that humans are generally not good at multi-tasking, and have a tendency of decomposing a given complicated task into a sequence of subtasks. They usually focus on one subtask at a time, the completion of a subtask is often associated with some simple and consistent actions leading to its subgoal. ...
... However, these studies are done on computers and could be considered a static movement dual task. 1,2,4 Gait kinematics have shown increased variability with treadmill walking at self-selected speeds. 24 With more portable interactive technologies available, determining how dual taking effects over-ground gait is necessary. ...
Background: With cell phone use and ownership on the rise, daily circumstances often require individuals to divide attentional resources between walking and a cell phone-related task. This division of attention has been found to detrimentally effect task performance, making pedestrian cell phone usage an increasing safety concern. However, most studies have investigated the impact of dual-tasks on situational awareness and few have focused on tasks other than texting. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of various cell phone-related tasks on lower limb kinematics during walking.
Methods: Fourteen healthy, college-aged subjects completed gait analysis trials in five walking conditions, one single-task walking condition and four dual task conditions: Walk+Converse, Walk+Read (Simple), Walk+Read (Difficult), and Walk+Text. Subjects’ movements were recorded with a motion capture system and peak sagittal plane lower extremity joint angles, gait velocity, and stride length were calculated.
Results: Of the eight kinematic outcome measures analyzed, all but one revealed some significant (p < 0.05) differences between dual-task walking conditions. Gait velocity and stride length both decreased due to the addition of the dual tasking, with the magnitude of the reduction becoming more apparent with the increased difficulty of the cell phone-based task.
Conclusion: This study supports a fundamental change to gait kinematics in response to cell phone use while walking, with the magnitude of impact being directly related to the complexity of the secondary task. The significant changes to gait kinematics in complex dual-task situations could present a threat to balance.
... This explains why the performance with tactile feedback was statistically better for the slider interaction compared to the button click, as it involves motor commands sent to the arm muscles to move the finger along the swiping direction. Furthermore, other studies showed that performance decreased with the increase of the secondary task's difficulty (a slider interaction is more challenging than clicking a button) [35]. ...
The use of haptic technology has recently become essential in Human-Computer Interaction to improve performance and user experience. Mid-air tactile feedback co-located with virtual touchscreen displays have a great potential to improve the performance in dual-task situations such as when using a phone while walking or driving. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of augmenting virtual touchscreen with mid-air tactile feedback to improve dual-task performance where the primary task is driving in a simulation environment and the secondary task involves interacting with a virtual touchscreen. Performance metrics included primary task performance in terms of velocity error, deviation from the middle of the road, number of collisions, and the number of off-road glances, secondary task performance including the interaction time and the reach time, and quality of user experience for perceived difficulty and satisfaction. Results demonstrate that adding mid-air tactile feedback to virtual touchscreen resulted in statistically significant improvement in the primary task performance (the average speed error, spatial deviation, and the number of off-road glances), the secondary task (reach time), and the perceived difficulty. These results provide a great motivation for augmenting virtual touchscreens with mid-air tactile feedback in dual-task human-computer interaction applications.
Innovation contests have been increasingly used to address innovation problems of seeker firms. However, seeker firms complain about low-quality submissions obtained from these contests. Research suggests low-quality submissions may result from contestants’ over-reliance on exploiting experience in solving similar contests. A more balanced approach in submissions involving exploitation and exploration (i.e., individual ambidexterity) will likely enhance creative performance. However, how ambidexterity affects contestants’ creative performance in innovation contests remains obscured. On the one hand, ambidexterity can have synergistic benefits. On the other hand, ambidexterity is costly to employ. We argue that when a contestant invests in cultivating individual ambidexterity, the benefits initially outweigh the costs, leading to enhanced creative performance. However, the costs may outweigh the benefits as individual ambidexterity increases, undermining creative performance. The overall relationship between individual ambidexterity and creative performance in open innovation contests follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. Creative performance was evaluated based on three dimensions—winning rate, submission novelty, and submission usefulness. Two analyses were used to test this relationship. In Analysis 1, we examined a panel dataset comprising 61,152 observations collected over 12 months from 5,096 contestants on a large innovation contest platform. Results support the hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped relationship between individual ambidexterity and contestant winning rate. In Analysis 2, we randomly subsampled 500 contestants from the sample used in Analysis 1. The subsample made 3,168 submissions, which were evaluated for submission novelty and usefulness by 14 experienced contestants (i.e., domain experts). The analysis results demonstrate that individual ambidexterity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with submission novelty but a positive linear relationship with submission usefulness. This work contributes to the literature on individual ambidexterity by identifying the inverse U-shaped relationship in creative contests and demonstrates how ambidexterity affects the three dimensions of creative performance. Suggestions for enhancing creative performance are also proposed.
Individuals often have difficulties completing tasks in a timely manner. Whether it be scheduling a doctor's appointment, purchasing a birthday gift, or booking an airline ticket, waiting until the very last minute can carry serious consequences. In two experimental studies, we explore how individuals can be encouraged to finish tasks promptly. We provide evidence for the “fresh start effect” by showing that a temporal landmark signaling a new beginning helps speed up their task completion. Notably, we demonstrate that the “fresh start nudge” can facilitate early task completion through the underlying processes of meaningfulness and motivation. We also report the moderating role of task openness, supporting the claim that the fresh start effect is stronger when the task is perceived to be relatively closed (rather than open) and must therefore be completed in fewer steps without interruption.
This study on the goal orientation and task difficulty toward teachers’ professional learning activities and performance: a moderated mediation analysis was undertaken to determine the extent teachers engage in professional learning activities at work; the perception of the respondents on teacher’s performance; the perception of the respondents on goal orientation of the teachers at work; and the description of the respondents on the level of difficulty of their task in school. Furthermore, this study determined whether the goal orientation of the teachers significantly mediating the relationship between professional learning activities-at-work and their performance and whether the task difficulty significantly moderate the relationship between professional learning activities at work and teachers’ performance. The study employed the descriptive with mediation analysis of research with 188 teachers used as the respondents of the study chosen through random sampling technique. A questionnaire was held with teachers and the collected data were analyzed using standard statistics. The results show that the teacher-respondents always engage in professional activities at work, they have positive perception on their performance, they also have positive perception on their goal orientation at work, and they described that they did not find difficulty in doing their task in school. There is a significant relationship between professional learning activities at work and goal orientation of the teachers. There is a significant relationship between professional learning activities at work and teacher’s performance. Goal orientation of teachers is a significant mediator in the relationship between professional learning activities at work and teacher performance. Constructs of task difficulty significantly moderate the relationship between professional learning activities at work and teacher performance.
The Attentional Blink (AB) is a phenomenon that reflects difficulty in detecting or identifying the second of two successive targets (T1 and T2) that are presented in rapid succession, between 200-500ms apart. The AB involves indicators of attentional and temporal integration mechanisms related to the early stages of visual processing. The aim of this study was to identify the effects of 24-h of sleep deprivation (total sleep deprivation, TSD) on the attentional and temporal integration mechanisms of the AB. Twenty-two undergraduate students were recorded during five successive days, in these three conditions: baseline (two days), TSD (one day), and recovery (two days). Each day, at around 12:00 h, participants responded to a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task (RSVP) that presented two targets separated by random intervals from 100 to 1000ms. The attentional mechanisms were assessed by the AB presence, the AB magnitude, and the AB interval, while the temporal integration mechanisms were evaluated by lag-1 sparing and order reversal responses. TSD negatively affected the attentional mechanisms, which is expressed by an overall reduction in performance, an extended AB interval, and a reduced AB magnitude. TSD also negatively affected the temporal integration mechanisms, manifested by an absence of lag-1 sparing and an increase in order reversals. These results suggest that people are still able to respond to two successive stimuli after 24 h without sleep. However, it becomes more difficult to respond to both stimuli because the attentional and temporal integration mechanisms of the AB are impaired.
We introduce RadarHand, a wrist-worn wearable with millimetre wave radar that detects on-skin touch-based proprioceptive hand gestures. Radars are robust, private, small, penetrate materials, and require low computation costs. We first evaluated the proprioceptive and tactile perception nature of the back of the hand and found that tapping on the thumb is the least proprioceptive error of all the finger joints, followed by the index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and pinky finger in the eyes-free and high cognitive load situation. Next, we trained deep-learning models for gesture classification. We introduce two types of gestures based on the locations of the back of the hand: generic gestures and discrete gestures. Discrete gestures are gestures that start at specific locations and end at specific locations at the back of the hand, in contrast to generic gestures, which can start anywhere and end anywhere on the back of the hand. Out of 27 gesture group possibilities, we achieved 92% accuracy for a set of seven gestures and 93% accuracy for the set of eight discrete gestures. Finally, we evaluated RadarHand’s performance in real-time under two interaction modes: Active interaction and Reactive interaction. Active interaction is where the user initiates input to achieve the desired output, and reactive interaction is where the device initiates interaction and requires the user to react. We obtained an accuracy of 87% and 74% for active generic and discrete gestures, respectively, as well as 91% and 81.7% for reactive generic and discrete gestures, respectively. We discuss the implications of RadarHand for gesture recognition and directions for future works.
With the pace of life accelerating, multitasking has become the norm in daily life. According to research, multiple cognitive processes, including numerical reasoning, comprehension, and writing, are negatively affected by multitasking. However, only a few studies have investigated the relationship between multitasking and metacognition. In this study, the effect of multitasking on metacognition was examined using a prospective monitoring paradigm (prediction of subsequent recall performance). In Experiment 1, the participants simultaneously studied word pairs (primary task) and differentiated between different sound pitches (secondary task) and then predicted their performance in a subsequent memory test for the studied word pairs (prospective metacognitive monitoring). The accuracy of metacognitive evaluation with multitasking was then compared with that without multitasking. In Experiment 2, sounds and icons of real-life applications were used to improve the ecological validity of the experiment in the secondary task. The results indicated that multitasking impaired metacognition in both artificial and real-life simulated scenarios. In addition, the participants who engaged in more media multitasking in their daily lives exhibited poorer metacognitive monitoring abilities in single tasks.
Although video content includes many advantages over audio content in terms of information delivery, the latter is being continuously released into the market. Additionally, audio content is being consumed in repetitive daily work situations that require the continuous use of eyesight because such content transmits information by only using auditory stimuli. Therefore, this study examined how listening to audio content while performing simple repetitive tasks can affect the performance and perception of such tasks. Based on the findings, although the audio content type decreased the participants’ performance of the primary task, the difference was not statistically significant. Contrary to the effect on performance, the audio content lowered the fatigue and boredom of the primary task, while increasing satisfaction, enjoyment, and immersion. In particular, music, entertainment speech, and information speech had a significant effect on the participants’ work cognition, whereas autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) had no statistically significant effect.
The goal of the project described here was to extend the immersive experience of the user in the Virtual Land Bridge. Such extensions would facilitate the use of the software system to contribute to the development of individual student learning plans over several different age categories. The principal strategy was to modify the multi-agent planning system to allow for the generation of local tactical behavior of the agents in the virtual world. This resulted in the addition of a new layer to the MAS planning system, producing a hybrid system that utilized global knowledge monolithically in the Pathfinder portion and local tactical knowledge in the VR layer. The resultant hybrid system was designed to produce improved caribou agent decision making and movement that could scale up to support large herds on the order of a hundred thousand and more. This new system is shown to increase user immersion that can contribute to the development of student learning profiles.
This book constitutes late breaking papers from the 23rd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2021, which was held in July 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Washington DC, USA but had to change to a virtual conference mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A total of 5222 individuals from academia, research institutes, industry, and governmental agencies from 81 countries submitted contributions, and 1276 papers and 241 posters were included in the volumes of the proceedings that were published before the start of the conference. Additionally, 174 papers and 146 posters are included in the volumes of the proceedings published after the conference, as “Late Breaking Work” (papers and posters). The contributions thoroughly cover the entire field of HCI, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas.
In this study we investigated how digital leaners’ behavior could be used to identify their attentional state at the time. It was expected to map attentional states with the level of challenge presented and the level of engagement achieved by an activity related to learning. To identify the main attentional considerations and related behavior, we have administered a questionnaire among 43 participants and requested them to self-report on attentional states, the measures of motivation, and the required effort. The questionnaire was adapted from Everyday Life attentional Scale (ELAS), and tested on 6 activities related to learning, directly or indirectly. The average level of focus the participants reported on these activities ranged from 50%–65%. They also declared to feel restless (53.5%) and stressed (41.9%) when motivated to do a task. Interestingly, 67.4% of the participants attributed to social media use when distracted from the learning activity. This study opens several avenues to use behavioral data of digital learners to identify the attentional state shifts of digital learners. Relationships among the cognitive load, the behavioral interactions, and level of attention can be observed. However, the nature and the magnitude of such relationships are yet to be explored.
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of perception within VR are not always accurate. The present study investigates the perception of time within a VR environment by asking for retrospective time judgments of the length of VR experiences. These environments varied in both the level of interaction with the VR environment, and also the spatial properties of the environment itself. The judged length of time did not significantly differ between conditions based on the level of activity in the environment. However, the spatial properties of the VR environment did produce significantly different time estimations. This finding suggests that careful attention should be paid to what and how users are trained or evaluated in VR.
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms is improving everyday tasks worldwide. But while the internet has transformational benefits, it also has its severe drawbacks. Internet infrastructure is extremely expensive and requires large private investment. To profit while giving free access has necessitated the presentation of personalized advertisements. Psychology-based strategies are employed to keep users perpetually engaged, often using emotional or aggressive stimuli that attract attention. Users’ responses and personal data are harvested from multiple sources and analysed through complex statistical algorithms. When hundreds of variables are collected on a person, personality traits, expense patterns, or political beliefs become fairly predictable. This happens because human cognition and emotions evolved for survival in Palaeolithic environments, and certain features are universal. Technology companies sell behaviour prediction models to anyone willing to pay. According to client purposes, users can be prodded to spend money or adopt politically motivated beliefs. Furthermore, smartphone beacons and face recognition technology make it possible to track political activists as well as criminals. Through the use of AI, therefore, tech corporations “design minds” to act as directed and socially engineer societies. Large ethical issues arise, that include privacy concerns, prediction errors, and the empowerment of transnational corporations to profit from directed human activities. As AI becomes part of everyday lives, the internet that intended to bring universal knowledge to the world is unwittingly throwing us back into the Palaeolithic era. Now more than ever, humans ought to become more peaceful and content rather than be driven by ever-increasing emotion-driven contests. This chapter discusses these important issues with the direct or indirect actions that need to be taken to maintain sustainable consumption, world peace, and democratic regimes.
The article presents the phenomenon of multitasking, representing simultaneous execution of two or more mental operations. Its particular type, media multitasking (MMT), is also considered as a relatively new format for combining various information flows that meets the requirements of the digital environment. The historical perspective of studying multitasking is presented: from individual experiments on the selectivity of attention to the phenomenon of digital everyday life. Modern empirical studies of MMT correlates among the main cognitive functions, including those of “light” and “heavy” multitaskers: attention, memory, thinking, and cognitive control, as well as productivity, academic performance, and metacognition are analyzed. The positive and negative effects of the MMT format are described. The resulting data set suggests that using the MMT format, which for most children and adolescents is gradually becoming a universal strategy of activity, the child adapts to an information-rich environment as a multiple and mixed reality. The importance of developing mechanisms for the formation of managed and controlled MMT for the education system is emphasized.
The proliferation of digital gadgets and increased media consumption among adolescents has raised interest and concern regarding possible effects on cognitive functioning. Research investigating this relationship has yielded mixed results. This study aims to replicate the research conducted by Baumgartner et al. concerning the relationship between adolescent media multitasking and executive functioning on a sample of 296 Romanian early adolescents. The same methodology as the original study was followed and its findings were partially replicated. Mainly, results of regression analyses indicated that more media multitasking with media activities was related to more self-reported executive difficulties, but not with performance on three computerized executive functioning tasks. Media multitasking with non-media activities was unrelated to executive functioning. When comparing extreme groups, however, heavier media multitasking was associated with faster performance on the task-shifting and inhibition computerized tasks. Implications for cognitive development and research methodology are discussed.
Purpose: The main objective of this research is to identify the impact of parallel performance of various tasks on the individual effectiveness. Moreover, a methodological goal was set for the research to explore the possibilities of using eye-tracking in the studies of multitasking.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The study was conducted in the form of an experiment. All participants worked at the same computer station time was measured with Eye Tracker.
Findings: It was confirmed that multitasking requires more time to accomplish tasks and deteriorates creativity, but not correctness of the answers in case of simple tasks.
Interestingly, in case of multitasking under time pressure, the performance was worse.
Practical Implications: Deeper understanding of the determinants and effects of multitasking on organizational and individual performance enables the adjustment of work organization and management style in order to achieve optimal results.
Originality/Value: This paper brings new insights to the studies of multitasking not only in
terms of the results of an experimental research, but also in terms of methodological concerns like eye-tracking as a new method of empirical diagnosis.
The extent to which memory for information content is reliable, trustworthy, and accurate is crucial in the information age. Being forced to divert attention to interrupt- ing messages is common, however, and can cause memory loss. The memory effects of interrupting messages were investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, attending to an interrupting message decreased memory accuracy. Experiment 2, where four interrupting messages were used, replicated this result. In Experiment 3, an interrupting message was shown to be most disturbing when it was semantically very close to the main message. Drawing from a theory of long-term working memory it is argued that interrupting messages can both disrupt the active semantic elaboration of content during encoding and cause semantic interference upon retrieval. Properties of the interrupting message affect the extent and type of errors in remembering. Design implications are discussed.
Technological developments have increased the opportunity for interleaving between tasks, leading to more interruptions and more choices for users. Three experiments tested the interleaving strategies of users completing simple office-based tasks while adjusting access control privileges to documents. Previous work predicted users would switch tasks to enable them to work on the task that produced the greatest current benefit—they would maximise the marginal rate of return. Results found that by interleaving between tasks users were able to focus on shorter tasks and that the interleaving decisions were consistent with a strategy of maximising the marginal rate of return. However, interruptions from access control tasks disrupted the processing involved in this task management and led to errors in task selection (Experiment 2) and task performance (Experiment 3). Task interleaving can therefore have costs in security contexts where errors can be catastrophic. Understanding which strategies maximise the marginal rate of return could predict users’ task management behaviour.
What factors determine when people interleave tasks when multitasking? Here the authors look at the role of priorities and cognitive and motor cues. A study was conducted in which participants steered a simulated vehicle while also dialing two phone numbers that contained sets of repeating digits. Participants tended to interleave tasks after typing in a complete set of repeating digits and sometimes also at the cognitive chunk boundary. The exact pattern of how participants interleaved these tasks depended on their priority objective. A modeling analysis that explored performance for a series of alternative strategies for task interleaving, given the cognitive and task constraints, suggested why participants avoided interleaving at other points: Such strategies tend to move performance away from a trade-off curve that strikes an optimal balance between dialing and driving performance. The study highlights the role that cognitive and motor cues can play in dual-task performance and the importance of being aware, and acting on, priorities. Further implications and limitations are discussed.
Research has shown that different types of interruptions can affect their disruptiveness. However, it is unclear how different features of the interrupting task determine its disruptive effects. Specifically, some theories predict that the difficulty of an interruption does not contribute to the disruptive effects of that interruption alone. Disruptive effects can be mediated by the extent to which the interrupting task interferes with the ability to rehearse during the interruption. In this experiment participants performed a single primary task with three interruptions of different difficulty. We found that interruptions were more disruptive when the task minimized the participant's ability to rehearse (as measured by the number of mental operators required to perform the task) and not just when they were more difficult. These results suggest that the ability to rehearse during an interruption is critical in facilitating resumption of a primary task.
The paper traces the vicissitudes of the Yerkes-Dodson law from 1908 to the present. In its original form, the law was intended to describe the relation between stimulus strength and habit-formation for tasks varying in discrimination difficultness. But later generations of investigations and textbook authors have rendered it variously as the effects of punishment, reward, motivation, drive, arousal, anxiety, tension or stress upon learning, performance, problem-solving, coping or memory; while the task variable has been commonly referred to as difficulty, complexity or novelty, when it is not omitted altogether. These changes are seldom explicitly discussed, and are often misattributed to Yerkes and Dodson themselves. The various reformulations are seen as reflecting conceptual changes and current developments in the areas of learning, motivation and emotion, and it is argued that the plasticity of the law also reflects the vagueness of basic psychological concepts in these areas.
At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job perfor- mance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communi- cate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and re- spond to and communicate with other human operators. Automated monitoring
Further simulations of human multiple-task performance have been conducted with computational models that are based on the executive-process interactive control (EPIC) architecture introduced by D. E. Meyer and D. E. Kieras (1997a). These models account well for patterns of reaction times and psychological refractory-period phenomena (delays of overt responses after short stimulus onset asynchronies) observed in a variety of laboratory paradigms and realistic situations. This supports the claim of the present theoretical framework that multiple-task performance relies on adaptive executive control, which enables substantial amounts of temporal overlap among stimulus identification, response selection, and movement-production processes for concurrent tasks. Such overlap is achieved through optimized task scheduling by flexible executive processes that satisfy prevailing instructions about task priorities and allocate limited-capacity perceptual–motor resources efficiently.
ABSTRACT It is widely acknowledged,that many,professionals suffer from “e-mail overload.” This article presents findings from in-depth fieldwork that examined,this phenome- non, uncovering six key challenges of task management in e-mail. Analysis of quali- tative and quantitative data suggests that it is not simply the quantity but also the col- HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2005, Volume 20, pp. 89–138 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Victoria Bellotti is a social scientist with an interest in computer-mediated com-
Past work examining the effects of interruption complexity on primary task performance has yielded quite mixed results. Some research suggests that more complex interruptions lead to greater disruption of the primary task, while other studies have shown that interruption complexity does not directly influence the amount of primary task disruption. It is our hypothesis that interruption complexity, defined by the number of mental operators required to complete a task as opposed to an intuitive sense of difficulty, does affect primary task performance, such that interruptions requiring more mental operators (more complex) lead to greater disruption than do less complex interruptions. Participants performed a single primary task in conjunction with either a simple or complex interruption. The complex interruption required more mental operators to complete than the simple interruption. Our results showed that it took longer to resume the primary task following a complex interruption than it did following a simple interruption. These results suggest that more complex interruptions, as quantified by the number of mental operations required, do indeed lead to greater primary task disruption.
Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this paper we present empirical results that suggest that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. We present results of fieldwork observation of information workers in three different roles: analysts, software developers, and managers. We discovered that all of these types of workers experience a high level of discontinuity in the execution of their activities. People average about three minutes on a task and somewhat more than two minutes using any electronic tool or paper document before switching tasks. We introduce the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten different working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another. We argue that design of information technology needs to support people's continual switching between working spheres.
We present data from detailed observation of 24 information workers that shows that they experience work fragmentation as common practice. We consider that work fragmentation has two components: length of time spent in an activity, and frequency of interruptions. We examined work fragmentation along three dimensions: effect of collocation, type of interruption, and resumption of work. We found work to be highly fragmented: people average little time in working spheres before switching and 57% of their working spheres are interrupted. Collocated people work longer before switching but have more interruptions. Most internal interruptions are due to personal work whereas most external interruptions are due to central work. Though most interrupted work is resumed on the same day, more than two intervening activities occur before it is. We discuss implications for technology design: how our results can be used to support people to maintain continuity within a larger framework of their working spheres.
We report on a field study of the multitasking beha vior of computer users focused on the suspension and resumption of tasks. Data was collected with a tool that logge d users' interactions with software applications and their a ssociated windows, as well as incoming instant messaging and email alerts. We describe methods, summarize results, and discuss design guidelines suggested by the findings. Author Keywords
A notification represents the proactive delivery of information to a user and reduces the need to visually scan or repeatedly check an external information source. At the same time, notifications often interrupt user tasks at inopportune moments, decreasing productivity and increasing frustration. Controlled studies have shown that linking notification delivery to the perceptual structure of a user's tasks can reduce these interruption costs. However, in these studies, the scheduling was always performed manually, and it was not clear whether it would be possible for a system to mimic similar techniques. This article contributes the design and implementation of a novel system called Oasis that aligns notification scheduling with the perceptual structure of user tasks. We describe the architecture of the system, how it detects task structure on the fly without explicit knowledge of the task itself, and how it layers flexible notification scheduling policies on top of this detection mechanism. The system also includes an offline tool for creating customized statistical models for detecting task structure. The value of our system is that it intelligently schedules notifications, enabling the reductions in interruption costs shown within prior controlled studies to now be realized by users in everyday desktop computing tasks. It also provides a test bed for experimenting with how notification management policies and other system functionalities can be linked to task structure.
Addressing the need to tailor usability evaluation methods (UEMs) and promote effective reuse of HCI knowledge for computing activities undertaken in divided-attention situations, we present the foundations of a unifying model that can guide evaluation efforts for notification systems. Often implemented as ubiquitous systems or within a small portion of the traditional desktop, notification systems typically deliver information of interest in a parallel, multitasking approach, extraneous or supplemental to a user's attention priority. Such systems represent a difficult challenge to evaluate meaningfully. We introduce a design model of user goals based on blends of three critical parameters---interruption, reaction, and comprehension. Categorization possibilities form a logical, descriptive design space for notification systems, rooted in human information processing theory. This model allows conceptualization of distinct action models for at least eight classes of notification systems, which we describe and analyze with a human information processing model. System classification regions immediately suggest useful empirical and analytical evaluation metrics from related literature. We present a case study that demonstrates how these techniques can assist an evaluator in adapting traditional UEMs for notification and other multitasking systems. We explain why using the design model categorization scheme enabled us to generate evaluation results that are more relevant for the system redesign than the results of the original exploration done by the system's designers.
Notifications can have reduced interruption cost if delivered at moments of lower mental workload during task execution. Cognitive theorists have speculated that these moments occur at subtask boundaries. In this article, we empirically test this speculation by examining how workload changes during execution of goal-directed tasks, focusing on regions between adjacent chunks within the tasks, that is, the subtask boundaries. In a controlled experiment, users performed several inter- active tasks while their pupil dilation, a reliable measure of workload, was continuously measured using an eye tracking system. The workload data was extracted from the pupil data, precisely aligned to the corresponding task models, and analyzed. Our principal findings include (i) workload changes throughout the execution of goal-directed tasks; (ii) workload exhibits transient decreases at subtask boundaries relative to the preceding subtasks; (iii) the amount of decrease tends to be greater at boundaries corresponding to the completion of larger chunks of the task; and (iv) dif- ferent types of subtasks induce different amounts of workload. We situate these findings within resource theories of attention and discuss important implications for interruption management systems.
This paper describes the origins and hisotry of multiple resource theory in accounting for difference in dual task interference. One particular application of the theory, the 4-dimensional multiple resources model, is described in detail, positing that there will be greater interference between two tasks to the extent that they share stages (perceptua/cognitive vs response) sensory modalities (auditory vs visual), codes (visual vs spatial) and channels of visual information (focal vs ambient). A computational rendering of this model is then presented. Examples are given of how the model predicts interference differences in operational environments. Finally, three challenges to the model are outlined regarding task demand coding, task allocation and visual resource competition.
Voluntary action can be studied by giving participants free choice over which task to perform in response to each presented stimulus. In such experiments, performance costs are observed when participants choose to switch tasks from the previous trial. It has been proposed that these costs primarily index the time-consuming operation of top-down control processes that support voluntary action. The present experiments showed, contrary to this view, that greater costs were associated with voluntary switching to the easier task of a pair. These increased switch costs for the easier task were accompanied by a reliable preference of the participants for performing the other, more difficult task. Interference between tasks during response selection was identified as the critical factor driving these effects of task difficulty. Together, the findings suggest that participants' voluntary choices, and the time taken to execute those choices, may not directly index the operation of cognitive control but instead may reflect complex interactions between top-down and bottom-up influences on behavior.
A new theoretical framework, executive-process interactive control (EPIC), is introduced for characterizing human performance of concurrent perceptual-motor and cognitive tasks. On the basis of EPIC, computational models may be formulated to simulate multiple-task performance under a variety of circumstances. These models account well for reaction-time data from representative situations such as the psychological refractory-period procedure. EPIC's goodness of fit supports several key conclusions: (a) At a cognitive level, people can apply distinct sets of production rules simultaneously for executing the procedures of multiple tasks; (b) people's capacity to process information at "peripheral" perceptual-motor levels is limited; (c) to cope with such limits and to satisfy task priorities, flexible scheduling strategies are used; and (d) these strategies are mediated by executive cognitive processes that coordinate concurrent tasks adaptively.
In 4 experiments, participants alternated between different tasks or performed the same task repeatedly. The tasks for 2 of the experiments required responding to geometric objects in terms of alternative classification rules, and the tasks for the other 2 experiments required solving arithmetic problems in terms of alternative numerical operations. Performance was measured as a function of whether the tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, the rules were simple or complex, and visual cues were present or absent about which tasks should be performed. Task alternation yielded switching-time costs that increased with rule complexity but decreased with task cuing. These factor effects were additive, supporting a model of executive control that has goal-shifting and rule-activation stages for task switching. It appears that rule activation takes more time for switching from familiar to unfamiliar tasks than for switching in the opposite direction.
Unexpected interruptions introduced during the execution phase of simple Tower of London problems incurred a time cost when the interrupted goal was retrieved, and this cost was exacerbated the longer the goal was suspended. Furthermore, time taken to retrieve goals was greater following a more complex interruption, indicating the processing limitations may be as important as time-based limitations in determining the ease of goal retrieval. Such findings cannot simply be attributed to task-switching costs and are evaluated in relation to current models of goal memory (E. M. Altmann & G. J. Trafton, 2002; J. R. Anderson & S. Douglass, 2001), which provide a useful basis for the investigation and interpretation of interruption effects.
When participants allocated time across 2 tasks (in which they generated as many words as possible from a fixed set of letters), they made frequent switches. This allowed them to allocate more time to the more productive task (i.e., the set of letters from which more words could be generated) even though times between the last word and the switch decision ("giving-up times") were higher in the less productive task. These findings were reliable across 2 experiments using Scrabble tasks and 1 experiment using word-search puzzles. Switch decisions appeared relatively unaffected by the ease of the competing task or by explicit information about tasks' potential gain. The authors propose that switch decisions reflected a dual orientation to the experimental tasks. First, there was a sensitivity to continuous rate of return--an information-foraging orientation that produced a tendency to switch in keeping with R. F. Green's (1984) rule and a tendency to stay longer in more rewarding tasks. Second, there was a tendency to switch tasks after subgoal completion. A model combining these tendencies predicted all the reliable effects in the experimental data.
We report on a diary study of the activities of information workers aimed at characterizing how people interleave multiple tasks amidst interruptions. The week-long study revealed the type and complexity of activities performed, the nature of the interruptions experienced, and the difficulty of shifting among numerous tasks. We present key findings from the diary study and discuss implications of the findings. Finally, we describe promising directions in the design of software tools for task management, motivated by the findings.
A new theoretical framework, executive-process interactive control (EPIC), is introduced for characterizing human performance of concurrent perceptual-motor and cognitive tasks. On the basis of EPIC, computational models may be formulated to simulate multiple-task performance under a variety of circumstances. These models account well for reaction-time data from representative situations such as the psychological refractory-period procedure. EPIC's goodness of fit supports several key conclusions: (a) At a cognitive level, people can apply distinct sets of production rules simultaneously for executing the procedures of multiple tasks; (b) people's capacity to process information at "peripheral" perceptual-motor levels is limited; (c) to cope with such limits and to satisfy task priorities, flexible scheduling strategies are used; and (d) these strategies are mediated by executive cognitive processes that coordinate concurrent tasks adaptively.
Interruptions are a disruptive force in both our professional and personal lives. In order to develop the most comprehensive mitigation strategies, it is essential to gain insight into what factors affect the disruptiveness of interruptions. Although a significant body of research has approached this problem from the systems and tasks sides, the role of specific cognitive traits affecting interrupted task performance has been largely overlooked. In this study, participants completed measures of intelligence, adaptability, and impulsivity-reflexivity in an effort to determine whether these traits influence interrupted task performance. Intelligence scores were found to predict primary task latency, secondary task accuracy and the ability to resume the primary task following an interruption. Copyright 2010 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Inc. All rights reserved.
The thesis of this research is that performance on a task depends not only on objective complexity (a task characteristic) but also on one's perception of task complexity. This study allowed investigation of the influences of (a) cognitive ability, (b) motivation, (c) subjective task complexity, and (d) task experience on performance for an objectively simple or complex scheduling task. Potential determinants of subjective complexity were also studied, as well as the mediating effects of subjective complexity on the relations between independent variables (i.e., objective complex- ity, cognitive ability, and task experience) and task performance. Participants (N = 195) were undergraduates who prepared a 1-week work schedule for a fictitious film processing store under either a Simple or Complex condition. Those in the Complex condition were additionally required to account for employee time off and varying store traffic. Hierarchical regression revealed significant, unique main effects for objective task complexity and subjective task complexity in predicting task perform- ance when controlling for cognitive ability. Subjective task complexity was found to partially mediate the (a) objective task complexity-performance and (b) cognitive ability-performance relations. Future directions for research and theory are discussed.
Interruptions can cause people to make mistakes or errors during human–com-puter interaction (HCI). Interruptions occur as an unavoidable side-effect of some important kinds of human computer-based activities, for example, (a) constantly monitor for unscheduled changes in information environments, (b) supervise background autonomous services, and (c) intermittently collaborate and commu-nicate with other people. Fortunately, people have powerful innate cognitive abil-ities that they can potentially leverage to manage multiple concurrent activities if they have specific kinds of control and interaction support. There is great oppor-tunity, therefore, for user-interface design to increase people's ability to success-fully handle interruptions, and prevent expensive errors. The literature contains very little concrete design wisdom about how to solve the interruption problems in user interfaces (UIs). Coordination support, however, is identified as a most im-portant design topic. This article presents the results of an empirical investigation to compare basic design solutions for coordinating human interruption in com-puter-based multitasks. A theory-based taxonomy of human interruption is used HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2002, Volume 17, pp. 63–139 Daniel McFarlane is a computer scientist with an interest in intelligent com-mand and control systems; he is a Senior Member of the Engineering Staff in the Advanced Technology Laboratories of Lockheed Martin.
We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to provide explicit feedback on how participants should trade off performance between the tasks. Results show that participants’ dual-task interleaving strategy was sensitive to changes in the difficulty of the tracking task and resulted in differences in overall task performance. To test the hypothesis that people select strategies that maximize payoff, a Cognitively Bounded Rational Analysis model was developed. This analysis evaluated a variety of dual-task interleaving strategies to identify the optimal strategy for maximizing payoff in each condition. The model predicts that the region of optimum performance is different between experimental conditions. The correspondence between human data and the prediction of the optimal strategy is found to be remarkably high across a number of performance measures. This suggests that participants were honing their behavior to maximize payoff. Limitations are discussed.
Classic work on interruptions by Zeigarnik showed that tasks that were interrupted were more likely to be recalled after a delay than tasks that were not interrupted. Much of the literature on interruptions has been devoted to examining this effect, although more recently interruptions have been used to choose between competing designs for interfaces to complex devices. However, none of this work looks at what makes some interruptions disruptive and some not. This series of experiments uses a novel computer-based adventure-game methodology to investigate the effects of the length of the interruption, the similarity of the interruption to the main task, and the complexity of processing demanded by the interruption. It is concluded that subjects make use of some form of non-articulatory memory which is not affected by the length of the interruption. It is affected by processing similar material however, and by a complex mentalarithmetic task which makes large demands on working memory.
THE EFFECTS OF MULTITASKING IN THE CLASSROOM were investigated in students in an upper level Communications course. Two groups
of students heard the same exact lecture and tested immediately following the lecture. One group of students was allowed to
use their laptops to engage in browsing, search, and/or social computing behaviors during the lecture. Students in the second
condition were asked to keep their laptops closed for the duration of the lecture. Students in the open laptop condition suffered
decrements on traditional measures of memory for lecture content. A second experiment replicated the results of the first.
Data were further analyzed by “browsing style.” Results are discussed from Lang’s Limited Process Capacity model in an attempt
to better understand the mechanisms involved in the decrement.
Typically, we have several tasks at hand, some of which are in interrupted state while others are being carried out. Most of the time, such interruptions are not disruptive to task performance. Based on the theory of Long-Term Working Memory (LTWM; Ericsson, K.A., Kintsch, W., 1995. Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211–245), we posit that unless there are enough mental skills and resources to encode task representations to retrieval structures in long-term memory, the resulting memory traces will not enable reinstating the information, which can lead to memory losses. However, once encoded to LTWM, they are virtually safeguarded. Implications of the theory were tested in a series of experiments in which the reading of an expository text was interrupted by a 30-s interactive task, after which the reading was continued. The results convey the remarkably robust nature of skilled memory—when LTWM encoding speed is fast enough for the task-processing imposed by the interface, interruptions have no effect on memory, regardless of their pacing, intensity, or difficulty. In the final experiment where presentation time in the main task was notably speeded up to match the limits of encoding speed, interruptions did hamper memory. Based on the results and the theory, we argue that auditory rehearsal or time-based retrieval cues were not utilized in surviving interruptions and that they are in general weaker strategies for surviving interruptions in complex cognitive tasks. We conclude the paper by suggesting three ways to support interruption tolerance by the means of task and interface design: (1) actively facilitating the development of memory skills, (2) matching encoding speed to task processing demands, and (3) supporting encoding-retrieval symmetry.
This paper reports results from a controlled experiment (N = 50) measuring effects of interruption on task completion time, error rate, annoyance, and anxiety. The experiment used a sample of primary and peripheral tasks representative of those often performed by users. Our experiment differs from prior interruption experiments because it measures effects of interrupting a user’s tasks along both performance and affective dimensions and controls for task workload by manipulating only the time at which peripheral tasks were displayed – between vs. during the execution of primary tasks. Results show that when peripheral tasks interrupt the execution of primary tasks, users require from 3% to 27% more time to complete the tasks, commit twice the number of errors across tasks, experience from 31% to 106% more annoyance, and experience twice the increase in anxiety than when those same peripheral tasks are presented at the boundary between primary tasks. An important implication of our work is that attention-aware systems could mitigate effects of interruption by deferring presentation of peripheral information until coarse boundaries are reached during task execution. As our results show, deferring presentation for a short time, i.e. just a few seconds, can lead to a large mitigation of disruption.
Goal-directed cognition is often discussed in terms of specialized memory structures like the “goal stack.” The goal-activation model presented here analyzes goal-directed cognition in terms of the general memory constructs of activation and associative priming. The model embodies three predictive constraints: (1) the interference level, which arises from residual memory for old goals; (1) the strengthening constraint, which makes predictions about time to encode a new goal; and (3) the priming constraint, which makes predictions about the role of cues in retrieving pending goals. These constraints are formulated algebraically and tested through simulation of latency and error data from the Tower of Hanoi, a means-ends puzzle that depends heavily on suspension and resumption of goals. Implications of the model for understanding intention superiority, postcompletion error, and effects of task interruption are discussed.
Recent research has found that forced interruptions at points of higher mental workload are more disruptive than at points of lower workload. This paper investigates a complementary idea: when users experience deferrable interruptions at points of higher workload, they may tend to defer processing of the interruption until times of lower workload. In an experiment, users performed a mail-browser primary task while being occasionally interrupted by a secondary chat task, evenly distributed between points of higher and lower workload. Analysis showed that 94% of the time, users switched to the interrupting task during periods of lower workload, versus only 6% during periods of higher workload. The results suggest that when interruptions can be deferred, users have a strong tendency to ''monotask'' until primary-task mental workload has been minimized.
The typical information worker is interrupted every 12 minutes, and half of the time they are interrupting themselves. However, most of the research on interruption in the area of human-computer interaction has focused on understanding and managing interruptions from external sources. Internal interruptions -- user-initiated switches away from a task prior to its completion -- are not well understood. In this paper we describe a qualitative study of self-interruption on the computer. Using a grounded theory approach, we identify seven categories of self-interruptions in computer-related activities. These categories are derived from direct observations of users, and describe the motivation, potential consequences, and benefits associated with each type of self-interruption observed. Our research extends the understanding of the self-interruption phenomenon, and informs the design of systems to support discretionary task interleaving on the computer.
Previous studies of multitasking have highlighted the importance of cognitive load in interruptibility by showing that forced interruptions are least disruptive when cognitive load is low, and also that users prefer to address interruptions at low-load points when given a choice. We present an empirical study that uses a ringing-phone scenario to examine how users manage deferrable interruptions in the presence of varying time constraints. We found that while cognitive load did influence multitasking as expected, the time constraints placed on the user also had a significant impact. In particular, we observed three distinct strategies for addressing interruption: the expected strategy of switching at low-load points, but also two other strategies of continuing on after a low-load point or giving up at a high-load point. The presence of the latter two strategies strongly suggests that users can adapt their multitasking behavior with respect to the time constraints of the interrupting task.
It is argued that, for full-time undergraduates, ubiquitous computing will continue to involve the private, circumscribed workstation as a significant feature of its design. We report records of how a random sample of campus-resident students makes use of a networked and versatile infrastructure of computers. Highly detailed system logs re- vealed intensive periods of use. The content of this activity was strongly biased toward more playful interests than the curricula agenda of the institution. This did not reflect unfavorable competition between the activity of study and other discrete activities such as computer games. Instead, the capacity of the desktop environment to provide strong distracting affordances for interaction and interruption is noted. This sustains a significantly mobile and multitasking style of engagement. We noted that the versatil- ity of ubiquitous computing creates tensions in relation to the activity system of private study. The same characteristics that empower research-led study practices also em- power the pursuit of interests in distracting competition with the demands of learning and research. Moreover, study may demand ways of acting that are not consistent with the affordances of ubiquity. Individuals working within institutional contexts can expect their activity to be- come increasingly orchestrated by information and communication technologies. In this article, we document actual patterns of using such a notionally empowering technology once it is put in place. The particular institutional setting considered is educational: namely, that of undergraduate students. We report how a random sam- ple of such students makes use of computers in their study bedrooms. Their re- source includes access to high-speed intranet and Internet services highly relevant to these students' institutional goals. We theorize how actual patterns of technology engagement might be related to design decisions about the infrastructure of com-
Multitasking is the result of time allocation decisions made by individuals faced with multiple tasks. Multitasking research is important in order to improve the design of systems and applications. Since people typically use computers to perform multiple tasks at the same time, insights into this type of behavior can help develop better systems and ideal types of computer environments for modern multitasking users. In this paper, we define multitasking based on the principles of task independence and performance concurrency and develop a set of metrics for computer-based multitasking. The theoretical foundation of this metric development effort stems from an application of key principles of Activity Theory and a systematic analysis of computer usage from the perspective of the user, the task and the technology. The proposed metrics, which range from a lean dichotomous variable to a richer measure based on switches, were validated with data from a sample of users who self-reported their activities during a computer usage session. This set of metrics can be used to establish a conceptual and methodological foundation for future multitasking studies.
In this study, we develop a theoretical model that predicts an inverted-U relationship between multitasking and performance. The model is tested with a controlled experiment using a custom-developed application. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control condition, where they had to perform tasks in sequence, or an experimental condition, where they could discretionarily switch tasks by clicking on tabs. Our results show an inverted-U pattern for performance efficiency (productivity) and a decreasing line for performance effectiveness (accuracy). The results of this study indicate that the nature of the relation between multitasking and performance depends upon the metric used. If performance is measured with productivity, different multitasking levels are associated with an inverted-U curve where medium multitaskers perform significantly better than both high and low multitaskers. However, if performance is measured with accuracy of results, the relation is a downward slopping line, in which increased levels of multitasking lead to a significant loss in accuracy. Metaphorically speaking, juggling multiple tasks is much more difficult while balancing on a high wire, where performance mishaps can have serious consequences.
We examine people's strategic cognitive responses to being interrupted while performing a task. Based on memory theory, we propose that resumption of a task after interruption is facilitated by preparation during the interruption lag, or the interval between an alert to a pending interruption (e.g. the phone ringing) and the interruption proper (the ensuing conversation). To test this proposal, we conducted an experiment in which participants in a Warning condition received an 8-s interruption lag, and participants in an Immediate condition received no interruption lag. Participants in the Warning condition prepared more than participants in the Immediate condition, as measured by verbal reports, and resumed the interrupted task more quickly. However, Immediate participants resumed faster with practice, suggesting that people adapt to particularly disruptive forms of interruption. The results support our task analysis of interruption and our model of memory for goals, and suggest further means for studying operator performance in dynamic task environments. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
Designing and evaluating notification systems represents an emerging challenge in the study of human-computer interaction. Users rely on notification systems to present potentially interruptive information in an efficient and effective manner to enable appropriate reaction and comprehension. Little is known about the effects of these systems on ongoing computer tasks. As the research community strives to understand information design suitable for opposing usage goals, few existing efforts lend themselves to extensibility. However, three often conflicting design objectives are interruption to primary tasks, reaction to specific notifications, and comprehension of information over time. Based on these competing parameters, we propose a unifying research theme for the field that defines success in notification systems design as achieving the desirable balance between attention and utility. This paradigm distinguishes notification systems research from traditionalHCI by centering on the limitations of the human attention system. In a series of experiments that demonstrate this research approach and investigate use of animated text in secondary displays, we describe two empirical investigations focused on the three criticalparameters during a browsing task. The first experiment compares tickering, blasting, and fading text, finding that tickering text is best for supporting deeper comprehension, fading best facilitates reaction, and, compared to the control condition, none of the animated displays are interruptive to the browsing task. The second experiment investigates fading and tickering animation in greater detailwith simil ar tasks—at two
Notification systems attempt to deliver current, important information to the computer screen in an efficient and effective manner. All notification systems require that the user attends to them to at least some degree if they are to succeed. Examples of notification systems include instant messaging systems, system and user status updates, email alerts and news and stock tickers. The benefits of notification systems are numerous, including rapid availability of important information, access to nearly instantaneous communication and heightened awareness of the availability of personal contacts. While the popularity of these systems has skyrocketed in recent years, the effects of incoming notifications on ongoing computing tasks have been relatively unexplored. The investigation of the costs, benefits and the optimal display of instant messages and all notifications in the context of desktop or mobile computing tasks falls in the general arena of psychological research on alerting and disruptions, but also requires research contributions from design, computer science and information visualization. To date, much of the psychological research on interruption leverages theoretical task constructions. In this special issue, we focus on the nature of interruptions such as messaging while computing and how to optimize the user experience.
How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks. But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries led to poor performance? We report a study in which participants manually dialed a UK-style telephone number while driving a simulated vehicle. If the driver were to exclusively return his or her attention to driving after completing a subtask (i.e., using the single break in the xxxxx-xxxxxx representational structure of the number), then we would expect to see a relatively poor driving performance. In contrast, our results show that drivers choose to return attention to steering control before the natural subtask boundary. A computational modeling analysis shows that drivers had to adopt this strategy to meet the required performance objective of maintaining an acceptable lateral position in the road while dialing. Taken together these results support the idea that people can strategically control the allocation of attention in multitask settings to meet specific performance criteria.
Interruptions are a frequent occurrence in the work life of most decision makers. This paper investigated the influence of interruptions on different types of decision-making tasks and the ability of information presentation formats, an aspect of information systems design, to alleviate them. Results from the experimental study indicate that interruptions facilitate performance on simple tasks, while inhibiting performance on more complex tasks. Interruptions also influenced the relationship between information presentation format and the type of task performed: spatial presentation formats were able to mitigate the effects of interruptions while symbolic formats were not. The paper presents a broad conceptualization of interruptions and interprets the ramifications of the experimental findings within this conceptualization to develop a program for future research.
The Multitasking Mind
- D D Salvucci
- N A Taatgen
Salvucci, D.D. and Taatgen, N.A. (2011). The Multitasking Mind.
Oxford University Press, New York.