Cited by 51Neural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesPersonal Information Management and User BehaviorHuman-Automation Interaction and Safety

Decision Making in Concurrent Multitasking: Do People Adapt to Task Interference?

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Nijboer, Menno, Taatgen, Niels A., Brands, Annelies, Borst, Jelmer P., van Rijn, Hedderik·2013·PLoS ONE

Abstract

While multitasking has received a great deal of attention from researchers, we still know little about how well people adapt their behavior to multitasking demands. In three experiments, participants were presented with a multicolumn subtraction task, which required working memory in half of the trials. This primary task had to be combined with a secondary task requiring either working memory or visual attention, resulting in different types of interference. Before each trial, participants were asked to choose which secondary task they wanted to perform concurrently with the primary task. We predicted that if people seek to maximize performance or minimize effort required to perform the dual task, they choose task combinations that minimize interference. While performance data showed that the predicted optimal task combinations indeed resulted in minimal interference between tasks, the preferential choice data showed that a third of participants did not show any adaptation, and for the remainder it took a considerable number of trials before the optimal task combinations were chosen consistently. On the basis of these results we argue that, while in principle people are able to adapt their behavior according to multitasking demands, selection of the most efficient combination of strategies is not an automatic process.

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  • When nurses are interrupted in their task, their attention is shifted from the initial process to the new process with a decay of the memory of the initial process; this leads to an increase in response time when returning to the initial task or even the nurse starting the initial task over and hence a likelihood of overwhelmed cognitive capacities and decreased productivity and accuracy in the EH

    “when the nurses are interrupted in their task, their attention is shifted from the initial process to the new process with a decay of the memory of the initial process; this leads to an increase in response time when returning to the initial task or even the nurse starting the initial task over and hence a likelihood of overwhelmed cognitive capacities [14] and decreased productivity and accuracy”

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Authors
Nijboer, M., Taatgen, N. A., Brands, A., Borst, J. P., & van Rijn, H.
Affiliations
  • University of Groningen (NL)
  • Carnegie Mellon University (US)
Corresponding author
Nijboer, Menno
Venue
PLoS ONE
Published
2013-11-11
Volume
8
Issue
11
Pages
e79583
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2121080257
Cited by
49
References
37
Citations by year
2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 1
FWCI
2.19
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (283597)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
Keywords
multitasking, dual-task interference, behavioral adaptation, task selection, working memory, visual attention, effort allocation, strategy selection
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Analysis of Variance, Choice Behavior, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Task Performance and Analysis, Young Adult

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