The Effects of Working Memory during Search Tasks of Varying Complexity
Open accessAbstract
We report on a study that evaluated the effects of working memory and task complexity on participants' perceptions, behaviors, and outcomes. Twenty-four participants performed two search tasks of varying complexity and completed a psychometric test to measure working memory ability. Our results found several important trends. First, task complexity had an effect on participants' perceptions about temporal demand and satisfaction with the time spent on the task. Second, participants with higher working memory exerted more search effort (e.g., issued more queries). Third, participants with higher working memory had better outcomes, particularly during more complex tasks. Finally, while participants with lower working memory exerted less effort (engaged in satisficing behaviors) and had weaker outcomes, working memory did not affect participants' post-task perceptions about workload and satisfaction. We discuss implications of our results for developing search tools to support users with varying levels of working memory.
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The level of mental effort is likely dependent on users' working memory; prior work found an effect between working memory level and search process outcome.
“It is not unlikely that the level of mental effort is dependant on the users' working memory: prior work found an effect between the level of working memory and the outcome of a search process [7].”
From A Mixed-Method Analysis of Text and Audio Search Interfaces with Varying Task Complexity (2020) · cites this paper as [7]
The Abstract and Discussion report that participants with higher working memory exerted more search effort and had better outcomes, particularly on complex tasks. But the Discussion says working memory had no significant effect on post-task workload measures, so the proposed dependence of mental effort on working memory is not established. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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- Authors
- Choi, B., Capra, R., & Arguello, J.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2019-03-08
- Pages
- 261-265
- OpenAlex
- W2921006681
- Semantic Scholar
- b4f19b8d9cc5708eb4d5163d503034b2dd5be53c
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 6
- FWCI
- 1.59
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (IIS-1552587, IIS-1451668)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Retrieval and Search Behavior
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Keywords
- working memory, task complexity, search tasks, search effort, satisficing behavior, temporal demand, perceived workload, user satisfaction, search tools, information seeking
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