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Why do i keep interrupting myself?: environment, habit and self-interruption
Abstract
Self-interruptions account for a significant portion of task switching in information-centric work contexts. However, most of the research to date has focused on understanding, analyzing and designing for external interruptions. The causes of self-interruptions are not well understood. In this paper we present an analysis of 889 hours of observed task switching behavior from 36 individuals across three high-technology information work organizations. Our analysis suggests that self-interruption is a function of organizational environment and individual differences, but also external interruptions experienced. We find that people in open office environments interrupt themselves at a higher rate. We also find that people are significantly more likely to interrupt themselves to return to solitary work associated with central working spheres, suggesting that self-interruption occurs largely as a function of prospective memory events. The research presented contributes substantially to our understanding of attention and multitasking in context.
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“Many digital devices and platforms are designed specifically to be highly engaging, using features such as notifications, alerts, personalized content, reminders and gamification to capture, retain and maintain users' attention (Dabbish et al., 2011).”
From The impact of digital technology, social media, and artificial intelligence on cognitive functions: a review (2023) · cites this paper as Dabbish et al., 2011
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
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“to unblock them (S3 and S4, from company S), and to interrupt themselves (all but two participants), similar to [29] and [12].”
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“Scholars usually equate self-initiated task switches to internally caused interruptions (e.g., Dabbish et al., 2011).”
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Roffarello, A. M., & Russis, L. D. (2019) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3290605.3300616 · Cited by 185
“, notifications, but also by internal stimuli [10], e.”
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“However, technological interruptions can also be caused by internal stimuli, also known as self-interruption (or internal interruptions) that Individuals interrupt themselves during ongoing work [1, 10, 22].”
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Revisitation analysis of smartphone app use
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Focused, Aroused, but so Distractible
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“Other work has focused on internal interruptions, where a person may interrupt themselves during ongoing work without external stimuli [1, 7, 17].”
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Janssen, C. P., Iqbal, S. T., Kun, A. L., & Donker, S. F. (2019) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.07.004 · Cited by 84
“First, we explicitly labeled stage 0 and stage 6, and we also included the option of self-interruption given that self-interruptions are prevalent, at least in office settings (Dabbish et al., 2011).”
MethodKaur, H., Williams, A. C., McDuff, D., Czerwinski, M. P., Teevan, J. B., & Iqbal, S. T. (2020) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3313831.3376817 · Cited by 85
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The sky is not the limit: multitasking across GitHub projects
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“Developers switch focus frequently due to interruptions [22,27,60], either external or self-inflicted [13].”
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“Dabbish et al. [18] found that such external interruptions are likely to be followed by self-interruptions which may become habituated.”
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Anderson, C., Hübener, I., Seipp, A.-K., Ohly, S., David, K., & Pejović, V. (2018) · Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive Mobile Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies · doi:10.1145/3214261 · Cited by 81
“Attentional shifts caused by internal stimuli are considered as internal interruptions, whereas external stimuli lead to external interruptions [30, 72].”
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Lottridge, D. M., Rosakranse, C., Oh, C. S., Westwood, S. J., Baldoni, K. A., Mann, A. S., & Nass, C. (2015) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/2702123.2702367 · Cited by 70
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“Since self-interruption is usually internal and difficult to control [7], it makes sense to leverage it for ProactiveTasks.”
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“Given the potentially negative costs of multitasking and inter-ruptions, why then do people seem to exhibit a natural tendency to multitask and self-interrupt themselves (e.g., Dabbish et al., 2011)?”
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Katidioti, I., Borst, J. P., & Taatgen, N. (2014) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied · doi:10.1037/xap0000031 · Cited by 70
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Roffarello, A. M., & Russis, L. D. (2021) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3411764.3445076 · Cited by 67
“, notifcations, but also by internal stimuli [26], e.”
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Gerber, M. A., Schroeter, R., Li, X., & Elhenawy, M. M. Z. (2020) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3313831.3376751 · Cited by 55
“A forced interruption of a task in response to an external alert can be stressful, can lead to bad performance and user experience, and reduces the chances of a more seamless task resumption of the previous task [7, 12].”
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Franssila, H., Okkonen, J., & Savolainen, R. (2015) · Ergonomics · doi:10.1080/00140139.2015.1073795 · Cited by 63
“The third dimension of information ergonomics is interruptions at work that can either be caused by the work environment or be self-initiated (Dabbish, Mark, and González 2011; Wajcman and Rose, 2011).”
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Gould, S. J. J., Cox, A. L., & Brumby, D. P. (2016) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/2928269 · Cited by 51
“The results of the experiment revealed that task switching is prevalent during on-line experiments, just as it is in traditional workplace settings (e.g., Dabbish et al. [2011] and Gonz´alez and Mark [2004]).”
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“” This is a case of self interruption (or internal interruption), as research on technological distraction suggests [1, 12, 31].”
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Guillou, H., Chow, K., Fritz, T., & McGrenere, J. (2020) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3313831.3376586 · Cited by 43
“For instance, researchers extensively studied the nature of distractions/interruptions and devised approaches to lower their burden on productivity [9, 15, 16, 27, 36, 41, 42].”
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“While interruptions as the ones examined here generally have negative consequences (Dabbish, Mark, & González, 2011; Jett & George, 2003; Spira & Feintuch, 2005) and, thus, might best be ignored, there is also a longstanding tradition of research that regards interruptions as a fundamental aspect…”
Multitasking in the Digital Age
Mark, G. J. (2015) · Synthesis lectures on human-centered informatics · doi:10.2200/s00635ed1v01y201503hci029 · Cited by 68
Self-citationUnderstanding, Discovering, and Mitigating Habitual Smartphone Use in Young Adults
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“Despite micro-usage not being a behavior that characterizes mobile devices, only References [14, 21], smartphones promote by construction such a behavior: no-tifications, for example, often spur the usage of other mobile apps [81], and mobile devices are nowadays the “companions” we can use in…”
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“Among the notable exceptions we find the seminal work by Perlow (1999) that shows how organiz tional norms regarding time use influence the organizational members interrupting behaviors, and the work by Dabbish et al. (2011) that shows how the organization l environment influences selfinterruptions.”
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Baldwin, M. S., Hayes, G. R., Haimson, O. L., Mankoff, J., & Hudson, S. E. (2017) · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing · doi:10.1145/3075222 · Cited by 37
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“Users can also interrupt themselves during ongoing work and then change focus to a different task, even without external events (known as internal interruptions) [17].”
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“Dabbish et al. (2011) found that self-interruption occurs more frequently when people who work in open office environments where they are located in a central work area.”
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Conservation of Procrastination
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“Multitasking is both essential and unavoidable in the workplace [27, 41], and it takes 11 minutes on average before people switch to a new task [20].”
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“Interruption Research & Timing While the focus of this paper is squarely on the visual method used to grab users’ attention, this work complements prior research studying why interruptions happen [8, 9]; the effects of interruptions on performance, resumption speed, and long-term stress [3, 7, 23]; and when to schedul…”
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Theorizing the Multilevel Effects of Interruptions and the Role of Communication Technology
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“…1995), that these interruptions have important effects on task performance (Addas & Pinsonneault, 2015; McFarlane, 2002; Monk, Trafton, & Boehm-Davis, 2008), and that more than a quarter of the interrupted tasks are not resumed (Dabbish, Mark, & González, 2011; O’Conaill & Frohlich, 1995).”
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“For example, Dabbish et al.[29] found their study participants sometimes self-interrupted themselves in order to switch to work for which they are accountable.”
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“Interviewees also mentioned ‘self-interruption’ [15], their own habitual messages and checking of social media, as a source of distraction.”
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“For example, it has been observed that there are frequent interruptions at the workplace [14], so it is possible that participants who used mobile devices to access podcasts (away from work) were less distracted than desktop users at work, and therefore received more of the content of the podcasts.”
Using Visual Histories to Reconstruct the Mental Context of Suspended Activities
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“In addition, researchers also identify an equally if not more significant type of interruption: self-initiated interruptions [14].”
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“, notifications on Facebook) or selfinterruptions [1, 9].”
Self-citationEliciting Spoken Interruptions to Inform Proactive Speech Agent Design
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“Indeed, a good proportion of self-interruptions occur because people want to find out information that will help advance their current activity [13,26].”
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“Research that considers the problem through a more expansive time window reveals different work design needs (Dabbish et al., 2011), finding that typical patterns of email usage, characterized by truncated response times, can lead to ineffectual, interruption-filled work episodes (Mark, Voida, & Cardello, 2012).”
BackgroundBlurring the boundaries between domestic and digital spheres
Rosenbaun, L., Rafaeli, S., & Kurzon, D. (2016) · Pragmatics Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) · doi:10.1075/prag.26.2.05ros · Cited by 16
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CreAItive Collaboration? Users' Misjudgment of AI-Creativity Affects Their Collaborative Performance
Bangerl, M. M., Disch, L., David, T., & Pammer-Schindler, V. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3713886 · Cited by 13
“In turn, multitasking and interruptions during cognitively challenging work are widely associated with decreased task performance [18, 19].”
Characterizing Work-Life for Information Work on Mars
Linder, R., Hunter, C., McLemore, J., Dutta, S., Akbar, F., Grover, T., Breideband, T., Borghouts, J. W., Lu, Y., Mark, G. J., et al. (2022) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3492859 · Cited by 14
“However, having increased autonomy over work also means responsibility shifts to the individual on how to carry out work, and not everyone may be as equipped to do so [40].”
BackgroundSelf-citationUser Time Spent Between Persuasiveness and Usability of Social Networking Mobile Applications
Bedjaoui, M., Elouali, N., & Benslimane, S. M. (2018) · International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia (MoMM) · doi:10.1145/3282353.3282362 · Cited by 13
Stop Thinking: An Experience Sampling Study on Suppressing Distractive Thoughts at Work
Niessen, C., Göbel, K., Lang, J. W. B., & Schmid, U. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01616 · Cited by 13
“…with multiple projects and tasks, workers’ performance increasingly depends on the exertion of thought control, specifically on stopping distracting thoughts that would otherwise interfere with successful task accomplishment (Schmidt and Neubach, 2007; Dabbish et al., 2011; Randall et al., 2014).”
BackgroundKhoshbakht, M., Rasheed, E. O., & Baird, G. (2021) · Buildings · doi:10.3390/buildings11020055 · Cited by 13
“As demonstrated by previous studies, selfinterruption has a higher rate in larger open plan offices [31].”
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Transforming Cognition and Human Society in the Digital Age
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“People fnd it difcult to resist the temptation to check for new sources of distraction [44], and thus self-interrupt themselves [29, 50, 52, 55, 96].”
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Active Progress Bar: Aiding the switch to temporary activities
Hurter, C., Cowan, B. R., Girouard, A., & Riche, N. H. (2012) · Electronic workshops in computing · doi:10.14236/ewic/hci2012.15 · Cited by 10
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“Dabbish, L.; Mark, G.; González, V.M.”
BackgroundInfluential“It's Like Being Gone For A Second”
Heitmayer, M. (2021) · International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI) · doi:10.1145/3447526.3472026 · Cited by 13
“likely to self-interrupt after having been interrupted externally [18].”
BackgroundWork Fragmentation, Task Management Practices and Productivity in Individual Knowledge Work
Franssila, H. (2019) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-22507-0_3 · Cited by 8
Time Well Spent with multimodal mobile interactions
Elouali, N. (2019) · Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces · doi:10.1007/s12193-019-00310-1 · Cited by 8
“Thus, theywill develop thehabit of interrupting themselves [32].”
BackgroundSelf-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to Digital Self-Control ToolsPreprint
Lyngs, U., Lukoff, K., Slovák, P., Binns, R., Slack, A., Inzlicht, M., Kleek, M. G. V., & Shadbolt, N. (2019) · SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/685tm · Cited by 8
Lee, Y.-K., Lim, Y.-K., & Lee, K.-P. (2016) · Designing Interactive Systems Conference · doi:10.1145/2901790.2901839 · Cited by 8
“excessive behavior [12], overuse [7,13,18,20], stimulation seeking and boredom [24], or attention issues found in phenomena such as distracted use, multitasking, and vigilance [6,19,22].”
Email intensity, productivity and control in the knowledge worker's performance on the desktop
Franssila, H., Okkonen, J., & Savolainen, R. (2014) · International Academic Mindtrek Conference (Mindtrek) · doi:10.1145/2676467.2676513 · Cited by 7
“Knowledge workers may exercise a routine-like habit of interrupting oneself even without any external interrupting stimulus like incoming email alerts by checking constantly email, even without any special motivation to do so [7].”
BackgroundCheng, Y. F., Shirado, H., & Kasahara, S. (2025) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3714017 · Cited by 14
Evans, B., & Shively, C. (2019) · Journal of inquiry and action in education · Cited by 6
Digital Wellbeing: Making Sense of Digital Dependency
Harley, D. (2022) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-19407-8_1 · Cited by 8
Who's Controlling Who? Personal Communication Devices and Work
Rose, E. (2014) · Sociology Compass · doi:10.1111/soc4.12194 · Cited by 6
Political Attention: A Genealogy of Reinscriptions
Harsin, J. (2019) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-20918-6_7 · Cited by 5
Reinert, R., & Brüning, J. (2022) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.860219 · Cited by 5
Zhou, X., & Rau, P. P. (2023) · Human Factors The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society · doi:10.1177/00187208221150353 · Cited by 6
“Interruptions that emanate from within the individual self, such as mind-wandering, are known as internal interruptions (Dabbish et al., 2011).”
BackgroundInformation ergonomics in eHealth
Okkonen, J. (2020) · Finnish Journal of eHealth and eWelfare · doi:10.23996/fjhw.94451 · Cited by 6
“The third dimension of information ergonomics is interruptions at work that can either be caused by the work environment or be self-initiated [27,28].”
BackgroundToward Social Role-Based Interruptibility Management
Anderson, C., Heinisch, J. S., Deldari, S., Salim, F. D., Ohly, S., David, K., & Pejović, V. (2023) · IEEE Pervasive Computing · doi:10.1109/mprv.2022.3229905 · Cited by 7
“They try to mitigate the net effects of interruptions such as prolonged primary task completion [6], increased rates of self-interruptions [7], or errors within primary task execution.”
Intelligent Notification Systems
Mehrotra, A., & Musolesi, M. (2020) · Synthesis lectures on mobile and pervasive computing · doi:10.2200/s00965ed1v01y201911mpc014 · Cited by 64
The influence of rewards on (sub-)optimal interleaving
Janssen, C. P., Everaert, E., Hendriksen, H. M. A., Mensing, G. L., Tigchelaar, L. J., & Nunner, H. (2019) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0214027 · Cited by 5
Cross-domain online vigilance, boundary management and stress among knowledge workers
Conradie, L., Roux, D., & Parry, D. A. (2023) · South African Journal of Business Management · doi:10.4102/sajbm.v54i1.3896 · Cited by 6
Talypova, D., Visuri, A., Shahu, A., Wang, A. Y., & Wintersberger, P. (2025) · Annual Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work (CHIWORK) · doi:10.1145/3729176.3729198 · Cited by 5
“These effects are further shaped by individual personality traits, mental states, and environmental conditions [9, 19, 50, 52, 58].”
Digital Distraction, Non-Digital Distraction and Psychological Bearing of Remote Workers
Nakayama, M., & Chen, C. C. (2023) · Interacting with Computers · doi:10.1093/iwc/iwad051 · Cited by 4
Chang, T.-J., Su, L.-T., Lin, Y.-H., Tsai, J., Tang, Z. B., & Chang, Y.-J. (2024) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3676512 · Cited by 4
“This behavior, sometimes referred to as self-interruption [13], may not be less impactful than external interruptions [10], suggesting that the strategies aimed at suppressing notifications may not always achieve the desired outcome, especially sometimes users still desire to be notified [8].”
Design Framework for Interactive Highlighting Techniques
Leung, J., & Cockburn, A. (2021) · Foundations and Trends® in Human–Computer Interaction · doi:10.1561/1100000084 · Cited by 4
Peripheral Light Cues as a Naturalistic Measure of Focus
Ramsay, D. B., & Paradiso, J. A. (2022) · ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences · doi:10.1145/3505284.3532984 · Cited by 4
“[7] These frequent interruptions have trained us to self-interrupt even absent exogenous cues [4]; over half of typical interruptions are self-generated.”
BackgroundLiu, Y., & Pfaff, M. S. (2014) · CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA) · doi:10.1145/2559206.2581264 · Cited by 3
Augmentation Impacts Strategy and Gaze Distribution in a Dual-Task Interleaving Scenario
Lukashova-Sanz, O., Wahl, S., & Rifai, K. (2021) · International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2021.1948250 · Cited by 3
“Task interleaving is very prominent in our society ranging from office workers (Dabbish et al., 2011) to air traffic controllers (Lee & Taatgen, 2002), and therefore, has been extensively studied in various disciplines (see Janssen et al., 2015).”
BackgroundUnderstanding and supporting mobile application usage
Böhmer, M. (2013) · Publications of the UdS (Saarland University) · doi:10.22028/d291-26541 · Cited by 2
Minimizing premature closure and diagnostic error in the Operating Room
Hughes, C. (2014) · Diagnosis · doi:10.1515/dx-2013-0025 · Cited by 2
“Furthermore more than half of these are self-initiated [3].”
BackgroundAn Exploratory Study on Academic Reading Contexts, Technology, and Strategies
Rocha, M. A. M., Nacenta, M. A., & Ye, J. (2021) · Mexican Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (MexIHC) · doi:10.1145/3492724.3492727 · Cited by 2
“We first explore the frequency of internal versus external interruptions; we followed Dabbish et al.’s distinction between internal (self-generated) interruptions and external inter-ruptions coming from the environment [10].”
BackgroundMethod
Metadata
- Authors
- Dabbish, L., Mark, G., & González, V. M.
- Affiliations
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (MX)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2011-05-07
- Pages
- 3127-3130
- OpenAlex
- W2033910215
- Cited by
- 132
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 14.62
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Architecture › Facilities and Workplace Management
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
- Keywords
- self-interruption, task switching, information work, prospective memory, multitasking, attention, organizational context, individual differences
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